Destroying everything to get the Presidency

Already they have coopted the DOJ, AMLAC, Ombudsman, Comelec, and COA. Next are the military and the Church.

When most are humbled in audiences with the Pope, Noynoy Aquino emerges haughty as ever. Meeting Francis last Jan. in Manila, he talked snidely against a critical sector of the Catholic clergy. In Rome last week, as Francis as usual knelt for prayers for his Pontificate, P-Noy momentarily was speechless. Then he proceeded to a forum with Filipino overseas workers where, instead of alleviating their woes, he vilified the election opponents of his anointed successor Mar Roxas.

That P-Noy pitches low blows and not lofty ideals speaks much of his Presidency. Since it’s now on its last six months, Filipinos are looking back to the past six years – all wasted. P-Noy has done little where it mattered: poverty and jobs, safe streets and clean habitats, corruption and infrastructures. His maligning of the presidential contenders to put up his chosen one only magnified his failures.

P-Noy, in sneering at “long-reigning corruption leaving nothing for a better life,” clearly alluded to Jojo Binay. The latter, whose campaign line is “Kay Binay gaganda ang buhay,” is accused of pocketing P2 billion during his family’s 28-year mayoralty of Makati. The Ombudsman, Dept. of Justice, and Anti-Money Laundering Council filed raps in record time, as with three opposition senators in pork barrel plunder. Yet the agencies have been ignoring documents of sleaze by three Liberal Party-mates in P-Noy’s Cabinet. He has protected them as Secretaries of Agriculture, Transportation, and Budget, despite worst deeds. The first, Proceso Alcala, overpriced by P4.3 billion the importation and cargo handling of rice in 2013-2014, plus more from price gouging of smuggled garlic, onion, and ginger. Joseph Abaya has wasted P10.07 billion on the MRT-3 commuter railway, let alone rackets in vehicle license plates and airports. Florencio Abad, infamous for concocting P-Noy’s P177-billion pork DAP, has poured into his congresswoman-wife’s wee province P850 million, more than for any other.

P-Noy also saw wrong in Grace Poe, Rodrigo Duterte, and Miriam Defensor Santiago. He twitted their promised “bagong umaga,” toughness against crime, and campaigning by social media, respectively. In contrast is the supposedly proven Roxas as partner in “Daang Matuwid (Straight Path). That empty P-Noy slogan has become synonymous to “more of the same hypocrisy.”

P-Noy, while feigning to make the people his bosses, actually acts like a haciendero towards menial sacadas. Roxas, in obliging P-Noy his anointer, is reduced to mimic him in crucial issues. He similarly glosses over the misery of Luzon commuters caused by LP president Abaya’s deterioration of the metro and provincial railways. He bandies the same callous refusal of P-Noy to cut excessive income taxes on the middle class. He blames Filipino superstitiousness instead of the obvious syndicate in the “tanim-bala” shakedowns at the Manila airport.

Recently P-Noy’s appointee-cousin was exposed on nationally televised Senate inquiry to know nothing about his job as Manila airport GM. A week later, he unrepentantly spent two hours videoke-ing at the work-time birthday bash of his co-incompetent PNP Aviation Security chief. That’s what happens when the haciendero protects his cruel encargados against the sacadas. There will be more such examples. Departing passengers, meanwhile, have taken to sticking Duterte tags on carry-ons or wearing his ballers, as if daring the bullet-planting extortionists to “make my day.” There will be more such defiance of authority.

But P-Noy is unperturbed. For, he has it all planned out. His tenure will live on under Roxas, by hook or likely by crook.

Already, three of all his seven appointees to the Comelec have disqualified Poe from the presidential race. The three secret agents of the LP used a single acknowledged mistaken date entry in Poe’s candidacy papers in 2013 as lack of domestic residency, against 400 pages of proofs to the contrary.

The Comelec also is preparing to debar Duterte, again on technicalities. The impending arrest of Binay, according to sources close to P-Noy no less, has been put off only because of unexpected non-consent of key military units. The sweep-off of Defensor-Santiago will come when serious ailments prevent her from campaign stumping.

Poe, Duterte, and Binay lead all the presidential surveys. With Defensor-Santiago as fifth (next to Roxas), the four together have the support of 88 percent of the voters so far.

That’s of no import to the haciendero whose wish is supreme. P-Noy will destroy any and all institutions that stand in the way, as he already has. He made the DOJ, AMLAC, and supposedly constitutionally independent Ombudsman, Comelec, and Commission on Audit follow his bidding. He is politicizing the military. Word is that a special emissary is working on Catholic bishops in Luzon to denounce Duterte for cussing at everyone and everything including Pope Francis, against the better judgment of forgiving bishops in Mindanao. Then, the cheating PCOS (precinct count optical scan) voting machines, will clinch the Presidency for P-Noy’s Last Man Standing, who has a mere 11 percent in the surveys.

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