"A good speech is like a lady's skirt," someone once said. "Short enough to be interesting and long enough to cover the essentials". Did President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's 7th State-of-the-Nation address meet this criteria?

The lady ignored Hamlet's counsel: "Brevity is the soul of wit." Instead, she gave a guided tour of windfarms, bridges, airports from Ilocos Norte, Iloilo to Zamboanga. And she ticked off names of more than 32 officials she credited for projects.

"This is a roll call," wailed an editor. Sure. But there's something more than ignoring advice on lady's skirts resembling speeches.

The old axiom held that "whoever captures the Palace captures the only government there is." Not anymore. "Imperial" Manila's near-monopoly on power has been eroding.

Autonomy and funds, made available when the 1991 Local Government Code kicked in, have seen clout grow in the boondocks. Programs and projects increasingly require backing of local executives.

But they're of uneven competence and integrity, with parochial mindsets. Magsaysay Award winning Jesse Robredo made Naga City a byword of transparent governance with broad taxpayer participation. Does Bohol's Governor Rico Aumentado match that in his projects like the Mabini Dam?

The President has sensed this shift. She has reached out in the currency that politicians understand: visible projects. Vegetable farmers in Northern Mindanao today can offer competitive prices in Metro Manila traditionally monopolized by Benguet farmers, she proclaimed in Sona. But she proved less discriminating in praise for gerry-mandering of provinces, as in Dinagat split from Surigao.

And there's deep skepticism on where she'll get the funds to bankroll the projects.

"Even the Good Samaritan needed money to put up the wounded traveler in the inn," Margaret Thatcher reminded the House of Commons. Echoing concern of credit agencies, Fitch International cautioned that if anemic tax collection doesn't improve, things could become unstuck by Christmas.

The President is ensuring that, despite a hostile Senate and avaricious Lower House,, her political flanks won't be decimated by desertions - at least until 2010 when the Constitution requires that she steps down. History teaches that a lame duck invariably ends up a dead duck.

This need for this political insurance became clear when TV cameras panned faces of those who constituted the President's audience.

Whatever else Sona does, it clearly has unmatched capacity to squeeze the largest concentration of political cut-throats, into so confined a space, at regular intervals.

Many of these pirates hold government hostage to their own personal agendas.

In this country, many die too early because they are too poor to stay alive. Look at our infant mortality rates. But what are the chances of buccaneers, from both administration and opposition, adopting needed reforms that attend to the weakest?

For many of our people, the only option is migration. But this is a world where, after the September 11 terror attacks, borders have been steadily closing.

The Sona live coverage also proved that Elections 2007 embedded, in official positions, a historically-unprecedented number of families: Macapagals, Villars, Cayetanos, Garcias, Binays, Dutertes, etc. "Kamaganak Incorporated," in fact, offers an argument for celibacy, the wry joke goes. Ed Panlilio, governor of Pampanga, being a Catholic priest, does not suffer from this problem. But in the years ahead, the country will.

A Sona is a relatively modern parliamentary device for the executive, to report to the lawmakers, and be held accountable. But "for all the trappings of a national government, we are not far from the era of the Barangay," observed the historian Horacio de la Costa, SJ. "We conduct our affairs pretty much in the manner of Lapu-Lapu and Humabon."

What is probably more worrisome is the unspoken assumption, in this Sona, that tomorrow will be another today. She'd not stand in the way of anybody who'd want to be President, Ms Macapagal said. But she'd whack those who get out of line. "From where I sit, a president is always as strong as she wants to be." That got a standing ovation.

Sorry. It will not be business as usual. We are in a unique era. Never before in our history did we have a population of 85 million plus. Never before were our forests so depleted (18 percent of timber stands left), water shortages so widespread, soil so eroded, rivers so polluted. "Nature is indifferent to flags, armies or parliaments," the oceanographer Jacques Costeau warned.

We've stumbled from a world of abundance into a time of scarcities. And that creates boiler pressure on everything: from resource systems to institutions, like elections or law enforcement.

Above all, there is the problem of selective application of power, where it can be applied. "Why does the President not want to be strong in running after those who commit illegal executions?, asked Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Raul Pangalangan.

Despite reports from the UN and Melo Commission, after more than a year of almost weekly killings, that there is not a single prosecution, not a single conviction?

"Our only conclusion is that when the victims come from outside her mafia family, this President has chosen to be as weak as she can be", Pangalanan adds.

"Be sure that people have reason for hope," the Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen once counseled. And this is the final criteria for any Sona.

(E-mail: juan_mercado@boholchronicle.com)