PHNO COLUMN OF THE DAY BY NESTOR MATA: NOYNOY REPEATS CORY'S MISTAKES
MANILA, AUGUST 25, 2011 (MALAYA) Nestor Mata (photo) 'President Noynoy wants to reopen the decades-old assassination of Ninoy Aquino.'
"I BELIEVE I know who it is," Noynoy announced during the anniversary of Ninoy's death last Sunday. He pointed to certain "key personalities" in the dictatorial regime of then President Marcos who had something to do with it.
And then he went on to paraphrase the maxim of Spanish-born philosopher George Santayana about "those who cannot remember the past are soon condemned to relive it."
Ironically, Noynoy didn't realize that those very same words applied to him. He was repeating the same mistake of the past committed by his mother Cory who had devoted most of her six years in Malacañang Palace to wreaking vengeance on the Marcoses.
It was senseless, fruitless, a big, big mistake. She divided the country, and accomplished almost nothing during her presidency.
And now her son Noynoy wants to resurrect that very case against the Marcoses and others he claimed had a hand in the slaying of his father. Like Cory, he is bound to fail, too!
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Cory's vindictive resolve endures today in her son President Noynoy.
For over one year to this day, he, too, has been obsessed with going after Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and officials of her administration. It's the same kind of obsession with the Marcoses that Cory had displayed in her time.
While his political cohorts in Congress are busy investigating the many irregularities of the Arroyo administration, which he himself initiated in the first place, Noynoy appears determined to devote his presidential hours to re-opening the 1983 murder of his father.
His spiteful character is a reflection on his governing style, and this accounts for the public impression that, just like his mother Cory's, his administration is rudderless and indecisive.
When, oh when, is Noynoy going to make his many campaign promises come true?
He has been in power for over a year now, and yet to this day he has not done anything positive. Instead of moving the country forward, he is stepping backward into the past in search of vengeance against the Marcoses.
Why is he doing this utterly senseless, fruitless, and mindless quest?
"Of what use is his focus on the Marcos past?" asked one discerning pundit. "... it isn't going to get the country moving an inch. In the first place the statute of limitations on this murder case has lapsed. …Neither has the country moved forward at all and the nation has been further divided by his brand of political vindictiveness."
Yes, indeed, history has shown that political vindictiveness never gets any country to progress. And that's precisely what had happened in the six years of Cory's failed presidency.
Clearly, what Noynoy is doing reveals his ignorance of the lessons of the past. What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end, while legends are lies which become history in the end!
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Speaking of history, let's hope that Aquino's peace team members now negotiating with the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Kuala Lumpur are fully aware of the failed past peace pacts between the Muslim rebel factions and other presidents before Noynoy.
First, there was the Moro National Liberation Front led (MNLF) by Nur Misuari that forged a peace agreement President Marcos, but it was not implemented when the Marcos' dictatorship was dislodged.
Then in 1996, President Ramos formally signed the agreement, but the MNLF was split when the MILF, led by Al Haj Murad Ibrahim, bolted from Misuari's organization after he (Misuari) became the first governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) during President Arroyo's regime.
In turn, an MILF leader, Ameril Umbra Kato, pulled out of the MILF and formed the Bangsamoro Islam Freedom Fighters (BIFF).
Shortly after the Aquino-Murad Tokyo talks, Misuari insinuated that there are now five factions in the MILF and that Kato has more fighting men than Murad's MILF. This incensed the MILF chieftain.
All this raises the question of why the Aquino peacemakers are dealing only with the MILF.
The infighting inside Murad's MILF as well as its rifts with Misuari's MNLF, Kato's and other factions, as a political analyst noted, shows that whatever shows that whatever peace agreement may be drawn up by the Aquino administration and the MILF in Kuala Lumpur may not be effective in bringing peace in strife-torn Mindanao.
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Quote of the Day: "Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft!" – Winston Spencer Churchill
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Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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