Pres. P-Noy's 100 days: The honeymoon is over!

It’s the first 100 days of the presidency of Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and depending on where you stand in the political fence, the people who supported P-Noy would give him a passing grade while those who belong to the opposition would certainly give him a failing marks. It is as simple as that! As one of those who did not vote for P-Noy, I’m in what you’d call a damn if you do, damn if you don’t situation, where I am expected to give him a failing grade. But if I give him a passing grade, my readers might say that I’m trying to play “sip-sip” to the new dispensation. So I’m sorry to disappoint my readers if I chose not to give P-Noy any grade at all.

For most of us in the media, the first 100 days of P-Noy is given as a “honeymoon” period, where he can do as he wishes without any criticism or interference especially coming from the media. So today, his first 100 days in office is over and let me say it very clearly that Pres. P-Noy won for himself a single six-year term and it would be downright unfair to grade his Presidency based on mere 100 days.

Suffice it to say that for us in the media, our honeymoon with P-Noy is finally over. Please don’t get me wrong, as it is not a license to criticize the President for the sake of criticizing him. We practice responsible journalism and we shall task him whenever he falls short and we shall praise him if he does good things. We want P-Noy to know the score on many issues, especially from independent sources, not just from his sipsip brigade!

Rather than grade the President, I would rather bring out certain highlights on issues that happened within his first 100 days. Of course, the most glaring of all is the Aug. 23 hostage taking incident, which has caused a national embarrassment to the Filipino nation, which happened under his watch. While the Investigation Report (IIRC) by the Department of Justice (DoJ) has already been done and is now in Malacañang, what we would like to hear from the President is, what would he do about this…specifically, whose heads would roll because of this botched incident. We can only hope that whatever he does, it would appease the people of Hong Kong.

The other issues that plagued his first 100 days was the appointment of Angelito Alvarez to the Bureau of Customs (BoC) despite the knowledge that during the Mango Tee Golf tournament in Ayala Alabang, he and his partner cheated on their scores and they were disqualified from that tournament and eventually suspended from the Ayala Alabang Golf course. This was a black mark on his anti-corruption campaign as it sent a chilling message that cheaters under the Aquino administration would be tolerated.

One P-Noy statement that made but later he backtracked was when he flew the Presidential jet, a Fokker F-28 for his first visit to Cebu. Early in his Presidency, he made a pronouncement that he was going to fly commercial, fearing that this 35-year old Presidential plane could break down anytime. Apparently, he has overcome whatever fears he may have had flying that old rickety Presidential plane. But P-Noy is warned to be careful.

One campaign promise that Pres. P-Noy kept was his announcement that his government would embark on a population control program. We’ve already wrote a column about this and we can only hope that P-Noy would side with the doctrines of the Catholic Church as these are not man-made doctrines, created by Cardinals, Bishops and Priests. These teachings come directly from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Incidentally when Malacañang wanted to bring the other religions into the talks with the President and the Bishop, let me say it here that this is totally wrong. Those other Christian sects do not succumb to Catholic Church doctrines; hence they would have an opposing view on the RH Bill issue. The President should sit down with the Catholic Church only, but it should not stop him from sitting down with Muslim Imams and Pastors from the various Christian sects. I just hope that P-Noy learned a lot from his “On-the-job-training” (OJT) in Malacañang in the last 100-days.

Together with my good friend, Choy Torralba and I was with Mother Lily last Tuesday at the EDSA Shangri-La (I also bumped into our old Shang friends, Ms. Lesley Anne Tan and Ms. Maggie Garcia) for a noon meeting, which lasted all the way to dinner time at the Gloria Maris Shabu-Shabu, where our old showbiz friends joined out table, GMA-7’s Kuya Germs, Girlie Rodis, Mrs. Annabelle Rama, my comadre Star Cinema’s Angie Pineda, who brought along my ina-anak Dr. Michael “Mic-Mic” Pineda. Yes we discussed showbiz and politics. How time has changed in the past, showbiz folks talked only showbiz tsimis… now the lines have been blurred with showbiz and politics hotly discussed on our dinner table. Mother Lily is still so young looking!

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