True colors

These are pretty exciting times for me. Each day that passes draws me ever closer to being proven right that Noynoy Aquino was the worst choice Filipinos could have made for president. Widening proof of corruption tainting his administration and the consequent nosedive in his ratings are now like ticking clocks to my ears.

I find great vindication in the slowly emerging fact that Noynoy is not as clean as he was packaged to be way back in 2010 but is just as dirty as the rest of them. At the time that I said so in the presidential campaign of that year, I was called all sorts of nasty names.

The only thing that kept me going then was the clarity of my conviction that I was right and knowing that I would eventually be proven as such, and the satisfaction that other than calling me nasty names, no one but no one had been able to refute point by point all my anti-Noynoy arguments.

I am particularly proud of my dare, unchallenged to this day, for anyone to stand up and prove that Noynoy was ever considered a presidential timber before his mother Cory died. I insisted on this dare to show that, contrary to what Filipinos may have deluded themselves with, Noynoy was just a stooge for opportunists.

People who never gave Noynoy a chinaman's chance to be president swiftly corrected themselves when they saw how potent the Cory Magic still was at the time of her death. They realized that, if played right, Noynoy the son of Cory can be shaped into a Trojan horse of sorts for their own raid on the country's coffers.

If ever I made a single mistake in my appreciation of Noynoy, it is in thinking how helpless he was. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Rather than being helpless, Noynoy is in fact a scheming genius who knew how to play in turn that most fragile of all attributes -- Filipino sentiment.

When Noynoy balked at the offer for him to run for president and went into a religious retreat for discernment, he was actually toying with Filipino sensibilities. He was actually playing his countrymen's weakness for religiosity. A person who backs off from a presidential offer in order to pray must be a saint.

In reality, Noynoy was already wearing dishonesty on his sleeve that early, only that people were so fed up with the excesses of the previous administration and so mesmerized by the promises of the next that they failed to see what was so obvious.

Nobody knows a person better than himself. It could not have escaped Noynoy's own assessment that he did not have what it takes to be a president. If Noynoy had been an honest man, he could have flatly refused the presidential offer, especially since he knew he was just being used for the gain of others.

But not only did he delude himself, he also deceived the Filipino people. Emerging from his retreat, he announced his acceptance of the offer for him to run for president. The man who could not win on his own merit was running for president.

And indeed it was all right at first. Not realizing how wrong they were, Filipinos surged ahead in pride at having elected the man who would save the Philippines. It was a great time to be Filipino, if only you did not know any better.

But know better you eventually must. After all, you cannot remain unperturbed by all that has been happening contrary to what had been promised. Filipinos began to wake up and realize how grossly mistaken they had been in placing their fate in Noynoy.

Judging by all the events that have been unfolding, allow me the audacity to claim Noynoy is even worse than his predecessor. At least his predecessor never claimed sainthood. But the worse hypocrisy is for someone to pretend being a saint when he is not.

Noynoy is not a saint. He is an opportunist and a manipulator of people's lives. He trifles with institutions and scoffs at the Constitution. But the worst of all is that he is not what he claims to be. I did not invent the creeping crisis threatening to engulf him. He created the crisis himself.

You may wonder why, if the ratings of Noynoy are sinking, his nose is still above the water. I think it is because Filipinos are too chicken shit to admit having erred in voting him into office. They cling to the illusion that regardless of the corruption swamping this administration, he is not a party to it. Let's see.

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Clarence Paul Oaminal

Dr. Cesar Filoteo St., Cebu City

It is the formerly unnamed public road starting from Ramon Duterte Street running perpendicular thereto and leading up to and beyond the Good Shepherd Convent in Banawa, Barangay Guadalupe.

The road is named in honor of the First Cebuano who served as Chairman of the Philippine Board of Medical Examiners in 1959 to 1961. He was replaced by President Carlos P. Garcia as the Medical Act of 1959 (Republic Acct 2382) states that a member of the board shall have a term of one year, and may be reappointed. However, a member of the board of examiners shall not serve for more than two years.

Dr. Cesar Filoteo, topped the list (12 candidates) of those recommended by the Executive Council of the Philippine Medical Association to the Office of the President sent through Honorable Enrique C. Quema, Assistant Executive Secretary. On Nov. 18, 1959 he sent a letter to the Executive Council of the Philippine Medical Association confirming the appointment of the six of those recommended to compose the Medical Board of Examiners. Dr. Cesar Filoteo, from the University of the Philippines likewise topped the list of those appointed by the President.

Dr. Filoteo was likewise the first Cebuano to have merited and completed Post Graduate Studies as a government pensionado (scholar) at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Medicine, United States of America. He specialized in diseases of the eye, ear, nose and throat.

He was Assistant Health Officer for Cebu in 1924 to 1927 and President of the Cebu Medical Society from 1936 to 1937. He was part of those who composed the Board of Organizers and Directors of the Cebu Institute of Medicine. Dr. Filoteo, was joined by the esteemed doctors at that time like Benito Antigua, Uldarico Bacay, Renato Espinosa and Jose Tolentino in setting up the medical school.

Dr. Cesar was born on Aug. 8, 1894, his parents were Eusebio and Balbina. Cesar married Eduvigis Rola and had the following children: Augusto and Lily who married a Ferreros. Dr. Cesar died in 1970.

The Cebu City Council on Sept. 23, 1985 on motion of Councilor Suga Sotto-Yuvienco (also a doctor of medicine and daughter of Don Vicente Yap Sotto) enacted City Ordinance No. 1203 named the public road in honor of a great doctor.