P-Noy clearly not a hands-on president

After three years at the helm of the Office of the President, it’s obvious to me that President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III is still presiding over what many of his critics tag as a “student government.” If you looked at the headline of one national daily, which screamed, “P-Noy: What went wrong?” regarding that report from the latest Social Weather Station (SWS) survey revealing that there are 12.1 million jobless Filipinos, you can immediately tell that P-Noy was clueless that under his watch millions of Filipinos in poverty was growing instead of decreasing in number.

If P-Noy were a hands-on President he would have instantly known those figures. Ten years ago, I was with international news reporters in the headquarters of Continental Airlines in Houston, Texas and then chairman Gordon Bethune had a 12-inch flat TV in the boardroom with a figure of 87. I asked Mr. Bethune what it was for and he told me “This figure is our on time record in percentage points. When it goes down, I push buttons to find out what’s wrong. Then those figures go up again.”

But then nobody in Malacañang has a similar way of finding out the rise and fall of our poverty incidence. In true reactionary form, the President immediately ordered the Cabinet to intensify their job creation efforts. But in my book, it is too late in the hour to make corrections. This President has wasted his time seeking revenge against his predecessor when he should have been looking forward and addressing the bigger problems of this nation.

If you ask me, the President’s surprised reaction was very similar to the reaction of the Emperor in Aesop’s Fables, who when a child shouted to his mother “Look Ma! The King has no clothes!” That statement startled the King to realize that he was fooled by his royal tailors… much in the same way that SWS and the yellow sycophants kept fooling the Filipino people and P-Noy with their propaganda that everything was making great moves for the Philippines under his watch! Now the sad truth has come out.

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J. Ruiz of ANC TV news summed up his report on the Senate hearing last Thursday that featured the latest whistleblower Ruby Tuason… “This is still the side of Ruby Tuason.” Indeed, the Filipino nation has once again been given another reality TV entertainment show a.k.a. “Media Circus” courtesy of the credibility damaged Philippine Senate purportedly “in aid of legislation.” But is this really the purpose of the Senate hearing where a great majority of the Senators were absent… perhaps sensing that they could become collateral damage? Your guess is as good as mine!

I have no doubt that many Senators are running scared that the truth might just surface and end up in a criminal case of corruption. Of course we heard Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago question the state witness…but someone ought to tell the feisty Senator that her line of questioning only reveals her deep hatred for former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile. Whether she believes it or not, she is no longer neutral in her questioning.

I have no love lost for Sen. JPE or Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, and if those facts can be proven to be the truth, I too like most people would want to see these two in jail permanently; unlike former President and now Manila Mayor Joseph “Erap” Estrada who was given a total pardon by then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, which in my book was the biggest mistake in her presidential career! The least she should have done was give him a conditional pardon. But then that’s water under the bridge.

However, in the spirit of fairness, how can the two accused, Sen. Jinggoy and Sen. JPE, allegedly the principal players of this pork scam even get a fair hearing when the Senators questioning them are clearly showing their bias? If there was anyone who came out with a saner questioning, it was Sen. Antonio Trillanes who literally warned Ruby Tuason that he believes that she knows more than what she was spilling in the Senate floor. So we join him in asking that poignant question, “Is Ruby Tuason spilling the whole can of beans or is she withholding something. By this I mean is she trying to protect someone allied with the Aquino Government?

Why do we ask this from Tuason? Perhaps you already forgot that when Janet Lim Napoles finally surrendered to authorities, we only belatedly learned that she was brought to Malacañang to see the President. Why didn’t they bring Napoles to the police station just like all suspected criminals? Why send her to Malacañang? Worse, the President even took time out to see for himself that the accommodations for Napoles were acceptable. Again, you folks have so soon forgotten what most people suspected happened inside Malacañang that a deal was probably struck to implicate all involved in this scam except the allies of P-Noy!

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 [email protected] or [email protected]. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.

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