Exploiting a woman’s misery

With Kris Aquino’s love life dominating public attention, I don’t blame the campaign handlers of her brother, Tarlac Rep. Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III who is running as part of the GO Team, for wanting to capitalize on Kris’ woes.

This seems to be the gist of what Florencio Abad, Noynoy’s campaign manager, has been saying lately. And to think that he was formerly a secretary of Education. 

The scandal, he said, would boost Noynoy’s senatorial bid. In fact, Abad disclosed, Noynoy’s upcoming ad will have Kris campaigning for her brother, using this line: "This is not about Kris…This is about Noynoy running."

Abad said the campaign tack would work because, in his own words, "Martyr ang dating ni Kristeta, the public sympathy will be with her." Could be. But will the public, especially women, sympathize with a candidate who is capitalizing on the misery of his own sister to score points for his senatorial bid?  

Personally, and as a woman, I find the tack too cunning for comfort. By capitalizing on Kris’ latest misery, Noynoy’s handlers may just as well court public anger, instead of becoming the beneficiary of the public sympathy generated from Kris’ husband’s dalliance. I mean, who’s to stop anyone from speculating that this whole thing could have been instigated from the very beginning by the Aquino camp? Or that from hereon forward, Noynoy’s camp would prolong the telenovela over the scandal, in order to squeeze some more points for the political campaign?

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Then there’s this political ad that "friends of the GO Team" ran last Monday, titled "The Real Score on GMA’s Economic Performance". By presenting statistics according to their distorted view of the economy, the political ad asserts that the economic miracle that the Arroyo administration has achieved over the last six years, is a mirage.

Fortunately, there is now a resident economist in Malacañang (aside from the President herself) in the person of new chief-of-staff Joey Salceda, who was quick to point out that the "misery index" could not be higher now, than during the Erap regime, because inflation has dipped to 3.9 percent while unemployment is currently at around 11 percent. The misery index is measured by adding the inflation rate and the unemployment rate. Our inflation rate levels have been perennially on the high side ever since the martial law years, through the Aquino and Ramos regimes and onto the Estrada and Arroyo times, although it tapered off beginning last year under the Arroyo administration. The same is true for the country’s unemployment rate.

And so, what the opposition seems to have cunningly done was to pick a high statistic on inflation and unemployment for the Arroyo administration and a low statistic on both from Erap’s time, in order to come up with a higher "misery index" for the Arroyo administration. Such intellectual dishonesty! 

Taking the occasion to debunk GO’s assertion about the economy, Salceda further pointed out that poverty incidence at the start of the Arroyo administration stood at 27.5 percent, but now stands at 24.4 percent. Moreover, only 134,000 jobs a year were created during the Estrada administration, while President Arroyo’s record has been 870,000 jobs per year.

Another tack taken by the GO Team is to rake up public anger over the Expanded Value-Added Tax (EVAT), promising their audience at Plaza Miranda last Saturday to put a stop to EVAT if they are elected to the Senate. Personally, I think that was highly irresponsible, a cheap shot at playing up to the gallery.

Now just a little over a year since the EVAT happened, we are already reaping the benefits of that bitter pill. Our government is no longer fiscally-challenged, with the infusion of P76.9 billion from EVAT, which is being spent on infrastructure and social services. The political will to arrest the fiscal crisis impressed foreign investors and that’s why we now enjoy their confidence after almost a decade of being shunned by them.

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Victor Noriega, a multi-awarded jazz pianist from Canada and the US, will hold a concert at the Cultural Center of the Philippines tomorrow, March 4.

Victor is an outstanding jazz pianist, composer and arranger who is recognized as one of the top jazz musicians in the Northwest. He has received prestigious Golden Ear Awards in Seattle, Washington from Earshot Jazz in the categories of Emerging Artist of the Year (2005), Northwest Instrumentalist of the Year (2006) and Northwest Recording of the Year (2006) for his album called "Alay."

Victor obtained his bachelor of music in jazz studies on scholarship from the University of Washington in 2000.

He is the son of Violeta Anonuevo-Noriega, a member of the UP Sigma Alpha Sorority and an alumna of the UP College of Business Administration, and Vance Noriega, a graduate of the UST College of Music.

The concert is being sponsored by the UP Sigma Alpha Sorority Alumnae Assocation with support from the Alpha Sigma Fraternity.

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