Defending the indefensible
Cardinal Tagle made a mistake in investing his good name on Noynoy. Tagle may have some credibility but it is not enough to save Noynoy who is now living on borrowed time. By the obstinacy with which he is mishandling the Mamasapano and BBL issues, Noynoy has lost all claim to moral leadership and the only thing that is keeping the lynching mob at bay is the absence of a viable successor by constitutional means.
Noynoy is wrong on Mamasapano and is even more wrong on the BBL. Tagle may think Noynoy is right but a million Tagles swearing Noynoy is right on either will not change the fact that Noynoy is dead wrong on both. Tagle is aware that some bishops have already spoken out against Noynoy. The least he could have done was to spare the Church from harmful perceptions of a needless political rift over something as worthless as Noynoy.
Noynoy is the worst kind of leader there is. He is bent on saving only his own neck. When Noynoy laid the blame over Mamasapano solely on General Napeñas, he was not unlike a ship captain who abandoned his sinking ship ahead of all others. And he thinks only of his own aggrandizement. He wants so badly to strike a peace deal with the MILF during his term that he does not care if he sells off the country's patrimony in the process.
Noynoy has closed his eyes to the fact that the MILF has been dealing with him in bad faith. He ignored the fact that the MILF had been giving safe haven to the very terrorists against whom the Mamasapano operation was launched and eventually cost the lives of 44 SAF troopers, an operation he himself helped plan and gave the go-signal to. And when the operation did not go as planned, he refused to own responsibility for the fiasco as any good leader would.
Tagle may have been misled into thinking that a coup was brewing. He should perish the thought. Filipinos are not about to go into another upheaval on account of Noynoy. He is not worth the hassle. All that the people are asking is for him to step down. There is nothing wrong with asking a leader to step down. A resignation is voluntary. It is not a crime. It is not unconstitutional.
Calling for the resignation of Noynoy is an exercise of the constitutional right to seek redress and of free speech. There is nothing sinister in such a call. And it will not lead to violence. It is a peaceful means of expressing dissatisfaction and disappointment. Tagle should not have wasted his time defending Noynoy from such a legitimate action by citizens.
If Noynoy does not step down, then that only reduces him further in the eyes of the citizens he has betrayed. That instead of lynching him citizens have opted to wait it out until his term expires is actually an insult that Noynoy, as usual, may not have seen. By opting to wait out his term, the citizens are actually telling Noynoy he is not worth the energy it takes to lift a finger against.
The same cannot be said, however, for the people surrounding Noynoy. When the calls for Noynoy to resign first started reverberating, that actually was a sign for those around him to start thinking of their own options and positions. When there boss had reached the situation where people have grown dissatisfied enough as to actually call for his resignation, they should have understood that to mean it was time for them to go as well.
But maybe the people surrounding Noynoy are just as worse as he is. They are only after their own interests. They have no regard for mounting dissatisfaction with the administration. All they are after is to squeeze as much as they still can while they can. With just a year more to go before Noynoy is legally forced to step down from office, his officials see this as a signal to make as much as they can.
There is hardly any resting place left for Noynoy to take solace in. Everything is coming down for his house of cards. His morality play is a dud. His charade about being clean and honest is being exposed daily as a farce. He has fooled the people not only once, or twice or three times. He has fooled all Filipinos everytime, from the very beginning until where we miserably are to this day.
Noynoy loves to take credit for the little miracles that happen everyday, unmindful of the fact that none of these little miracles came on account of something substantial that he has initiated, some policy that he has formulated. These little miracles are the results of the resiliency of Filipinos, to make do with what they have under any circumstances.
But when things go wrong, Noynoy always finds someone else to blame. And since it is increasingly getting too difficult to blame Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who by this time has become too far distant in the past to serve as a working scapegoat, he makes do with whoever is conveniently available, like Napenas. And for Tagle to go against his own brothers in defense of the indefensible only exposes the prelate's own crisis within himself.
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