VANTAGE POINT.

Byline: Luis V. Teodoro

Astatesman she's never been. And statesmanlike she wasn't during her ninth, and hopefully last, State of the Nation Address. As many expected, she was her usual self: petulant, combative, self-righteous, arrogant.

This year's SONA would have been another ho-hum event were it not for the context in which it was being delivered.

Instead of rising above the gutter politics she swears she's immune to but is actually the master of, she reached another low by using what was supposed to be a report to the nation to attack her critics, justify her actions or lack of them (she didn't declare martial law), and to praise herself (for not declaring martial law, among other reasons).

Instead of telling the country what its real state is, she made claims contrary to what practically every sector of Philippine society knows, whether academia, the business community or the NGOs, but most especially the vast masses of Filipinos she and the political class she …