A point against the president

This article was supposed to be published last Sunday but the board meeting of our rural bank in Leyte, the day previous, took much of my time that I failed to email it. Hoping that the more recent events have not made this piece rather untimely, I am taking the risk of printing it despite its seeming irrelevance.

Right after the earthquake ravaged large portions of Bohol, my province of birth, I had myself glued on the television trying to comprehend the magnitude of the otherwise unimaginable loss of human lives and incalculable property damage. Every picture frame flashed on the TV screen moved me into deeper anguish. For instance, the sight of children literally begging for anything edible looked devastating. That scene projected a profound hunger never before experienced in that island of hard working men and women. It was most touching that they lined along destroyed roads as to show that they had nowhere else to go.

But, in the midst of a gruesome parade of eerie images, there was reprieve of some kind. It lifted my spirit to see His Excellency, President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino. He came to see the extent of the damage and more importantly to assure us, his people, that we are not entirely helpless because our government is prepared to fill all required necessities. Each step the president made in our shores indicated his concern for our welfare. Or so I believed or made to believe!

Yes, I saw the president on TV as he toured the Basilica del Santo Niño. When he stooped to pick up something from among the rubbles, he, in a manner of speaking, flexed his muscle showing the willingness and prepared of his administration to meet the catastrophe and alleviate our sufferings. His message was considerably loud. But, unfortunately, it was not clear.

His move was more that of a consummate politician at work. Never mind statesmanship! He might have chosen to visit first the basilica because probably thought that the physical damage to its belfry is worth more than the lives of the four ordinary and inconsequential persons who died at the Pasil Fish Market. When he neglected to observe the constitutionally enshrined hierarchy of rights of life first, then liberty before property, his popularity, termed public acceptance by pollsters, was uppermost in his convoluted political mind. If I were to coin words he could have said then when he stood at the hallowed grounds of the church and put the phrase into his mouth, I would have said, "to hell with that constitutional paradigm. What is important that I please the church leaders".

If there is such a thing as executive privilege in connection with the presidential authority to withhold information from certain sectors of our society, there is a more absolute context. It is presidential prerogative. He exercised this prerogative like his position was at stake.

The presidential disregard of hierarchy of rights may be a theoretical faux pas that is unpardonable only to legal purists. Everyone else could simply gloss over it and assign it to the forgettable statistics. Yet, it was not the only error the president committed when he visited our city. There was something else that was more perceptible to the citizens.

President Aquino insulted the leadership of Cebu City. He disregarded protocol. I expected him to show courtesy to the offices, not the persons, of the mayor and the vice mayor. Even if Mayor Michael L. Rama and Vice Mayor Edgardo C. Labella, do not belong to his political party, the president was supposed to have visited the city as the president of the land and not as the partisan king. 

To show his contempt to our city mayor, the president chose to tag along a non-city officer. Mr. Tomas R. Osmeña might have been our city mayor, but his time is past. He is just as ordinary a Cebu City citizen as Atty. Alvin B. Garcia, also a former mayor. If Malacañang decided to keep Mr. Osmeña within reach while touring our city, he, if he had a sense of propriety and a high degree of decency, should have asked Mayor Rama and Vice Mayor Labella, to come along. Bahala na ug itoy-itoy lang.  In that regard, President Aquino failed to score legitimate points.

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