OPINION BY NESTOR MATA: WHERE IS NOYNOY LEADING OUR NATION?
MANILA, JANUARY 4, 2011 (MALAYA) Nestor Mata - ('We hope that President Aquino has learned lessons from his mistakes during his first six months in office.' )
PREDICTION has purpose, and it is not to win a bet about the future but to express a hope about what we might like the future to be.
So, when we make a prediction about the next six months of President Noynoy Aquino this year of 2011, it is to express the wish – most hopefully not a forlorn hope! – that he learned well his lessons from the embarrassing mistakes committed during his first six months in 2010, and not to repeat them!
As you all remember, we're referring to the series of misstatements and missteps, the fumbles and foibles, the boo-boos and bumbles that he and those he called the "best and brightest" advisers had committed from Day One to the last day of his six months in office in 2010.
All that has happened exposed Aquino, who had proclaimed himself as the political heir of his parents Ninoy and Cory during the tumultuous campaign for the presidency last May, as a flawed and impotent leader. He failed to even start fulfilling his campaign promises, foremost of all, to put an end to corruption and to alleviate the plight of the poor.
He blamed his failures on all those he perceived as his political foes for getting in his way to bring about changes and reforms in the government that was corrupted by his immediate predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Most significant of all, he was angered by the Supreme Court's landmark decision striking down as unconstitutional his very first diktat, Executive Order No. 1 creating his "Truth Commission" which is aimed at investigating cases of official corruption in Arroyo's administration of nine long years.
He believed, wrongly, that his version of a truth commission was unfairly "singled out" by the tribunal headed by Chief Justice Renato Corona (Arroyo's "midnight appointee" and Aquino's "bete noire").
But a careful reading of the decision itself belied his claim.
It clearly said that "of all branches of government, it is the judiciary which is most interested in knowing the truth…," but "it must be emphasized that the search for the truth must be within constitutional bounds for ours is still a government of laws and not of men."
Not only that, he, petulantly, railed at his political critics, especially the pundits and commentators in the non-yellow colored media that severely criticized his every mistake in governance, diplomatic faux pas, and even for peering into his love affairs. He blamed all of them for his crippled promises, his dismal failure to govern wisely and well.
But, truth to tell, the fault lies not in the honorable SC's chief justice and nine associate justices who didn't follow his wish and will, and the critical pundits and other members of the commentaria that fustigated him.
The fault, Mr. President, lies in you as an obviously unprepared and inexperienced leader as well as the collective folly of your portfolio advisers, derisively called "lightweights" and "amateurs" by political critics in the Senate!
Your despicable outbursts manifestly showed that you, as a politician of twelve long years, failed to remember that in politics an angry person is generally understood to be a loser. And also you must have forgotten that politics is always, at the end of the day (as you love to say this annoying phrase again and again!), a game of addition, not subtraction!
How will we as a nation become strong when it is being sadly divided by you, by incessantly conflicting political factions, with an increasingly impoverished working and middle class, and wealth concentrated increasingly among the few who control the world of business and industry and are protected by those entrenched in power, mostly from the dynastic families (just like Aquino's!) that have ruled this country for many, many decades?
Where, oh where, on earth is President Benigno Cojuangco Aquino III leading our country?
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Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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