EDITORIAL - Missed opportunities

For a while there, as he rambled on with his State of the Nation Address, President Aquino had the entire Filipino nation fooled. He singled out three government agencies -- Bureau of Immigration, Bureau of Customs, and National Irrigation Administration -- for a public tongue-lashing.

The three agencies, according to Aquino, were hotbeds of corruption and inefficiency whose officials, if they had any shame at all, ought to resign. It was such a stinging public rebuke that one leading official of the agencies concerned actually offered promptly to resign.

Guilty or not, the offer of Customs commissioner Ruffy Biazon to resign opened up endless opportunities for both Biazon and Aquino to send the right signal to the nation that all the promises of reform were being pursued in earnest.

But then, no sooner had Biazon offered to resign than Aquino sent him a text message saying, in no uncertain terms, that he continues to hold Biazon in high confidence. What? So what was the speech for? Was it just for the sound bites?

Had Biazon been allowed to resign, it would have shown to one and all that he was a true professional, was a man of honor, dignity and self-respect. More importantly, it would have allowed him to be viewed in a different light, away from the stigma that Aquino's speech created.

On the part of Aquino, allowing Biazon to resign would have proven how serious he was in implementing the reforms he keeps talking about. It no longer mattered whether Biazon himself was guilty of anything or not. Having thrown the gauntlet, Aquino should have seen through his very own challenge.

But alack and alas, Aquino blinked. By opting to keep Biazon despite the great impact his SONA speech created, Aquino only succeeded, by his own deed, in underscoring the hollowness of his words. By his own hand he has sent the signal that what he says is not exactly what he means.

Enlightened by this betrayal, one begins to see more evidences of the charade and the farce. Suddenly, his tirade against the NIA for doing so little, seems contrived when weighed against the great inadequacies of another agency -- the DepEd. Until NIA got spanked, nobody knew its failings. DepEd's are known to all.

But the DepEd is headed by a dear friend that Aquino treats like a lover. Despite glaring shortages in everything pertaining to education, Aquino choose to highlight instead a few inconsequential things, like books being now cheaper by a few centavos, as if centavos are still fun in the Philippines.