MANILA, OCTOBER 26, 2010 (MALAYA) NESTOR MATA ('Now well on his way to his second hundred days in office, President Noynoy has not even shown any signs of fulfilling his campaign promises.')
THE mealy-mouthed propagandists of Noynoy Aquino, who were adept at spinning stories to advance his bid to the presidency during the campaign, today continue to cast him in a positive light as a "promising" leader, often at the expense of the truth.
Well, he mouthed many promises, but now that he is the president, these are all turning out to be replete with myth after myth. Like the promise to end corruption; like the promise to alleviate the plight of the poor; like the promise not to impose new taxes; like the promise that he would transcend petty politics and bring together the people; and, yes, the promise to transform the political landscape for good.
We have not seen signs of any efforts even to begin fulfilling any of them, so far, by Aquino, now well on the way to his second hundred days in office.
Instead, in his first hundred days in office, what we saw were manifestations of a vindictive, a divider and not a unifier, and an arrogant leader!
The most vivid instance was when he recently riled against the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because he was appointed by his hated predecessor as head of the judiciary (the third equal branch of government), and vented his ire for its refusal to bend the rules of law to suit his political needs of the moment.
This refers to the case of one so-called "midnight appointee" (as he and his drooling pavlovian Palace hirelings derisively branded her and other appointments of then President Gloria Arroyo)) whose dismissal was temporarily stopped by the high tribunal.
This is a constitutional issue that Aquino seems not to have been briefed by his legal eagles in Malacañang. It took SC Chief Justice Renato Corona to tell him that a hostile Executive Branch of government can't stop the Judiciary branch from upholding its right of judicial review as mandated by the Constitution. Yes, the very same Charter that was ratified in 1987 when Noynoy's own mother Cory was the president.
As Corona so tellingly lectured, "the judiciary may not have the power of the sword as wielded by the Executive … but it wields the power of the pen or the authority to interpret the Constitution and the laws."
This is certainly a timely lesson for Aquino, who holds the most powerful job in the country, that he ought to remember --- his executive edicts and ukases are still subject to being challenged or questioned before the courts of law and eventually reviewed by the highest tribunal of the land. And it should put an end to his arrogant warning of a clash between the executive office and the judiciary.
Aquino's confrontational and arrogant attitudes seem to have seeped down to at least two of his officials in the Cabinet. One is his mouthpiece Edwin Lacierda, who has been confrontational, too, in his attitude to media people, especially the non-yellowed commentariat in the press and broadcast media. The other is Teresita Deles, Presidential Adviser on Peace and Process, whose replacement has been sought by Mindanao solons. She arrogantly told them: "…the problem with you Muslim legislators is that you are all new and you do not understand how it works… I have been working on these issues for a long time."
This has quickly seized by another Manila paper's editorialist to acidly comment: "the real problem with Noynoy and his party allies …is that they think they are God's gift to politics and government through their claim of their hypocritical straight and righteous path, which is slowly being shown up as an arrogant and corrupt path."
Yes, indeed, if Noynoy and his fawning loyalists do not change their despicable confrontational and arrogant attitudes, and wake up to the stark political realities and act quickly with dispatch, they will be reduced, even before their first thousand days in power, to nothing more than little specks of dust crushed by the grinding iron wheels of unemotional history!
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Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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