BY GARY OLIVAR: A DERAILED TRAIN
MANILA, NOVEMBER 9, 2011 (STANDARD) One would have thought the issues surrounding the constitutional right of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to leave the country for medical treatment were pretty straightforward: She has not been formally charged before any court of law, which alone has the right to prevent any citizen from leaving by issuing a hold departure order. This is why leftist party-lister Congressman Teddy Casino has been urging the expeditious filing of charges against her, in order to prevent her from leaving—which introduces into our justice system a new reason to flout your constitutional right to travel: not your guilt or innocence, not what the evidence says, but simply if enough politician and media bullies say you're guilty.
Unfortunately, this Stalinist thinking can only be expected from someone like Casino, whose presumptive ideological heroes presided over proletarian dictatorships that routinely prevented dissidents and activists from leaving the country.
A watch list order that can be issued by an executive agency like the Justice Department cannot operate to restrain one's right to travel. No less than Liberal Party stalwart Senator Franklin Drilon has already scolded Justice Secretary Leila de Lima for usurping unwarranted authority in doing so.
And yet she's still there flailing away, grasping at all sorts of illogical straws to justify her actions. My, that Senate seat she's angling for in 2013—potentially available only with Aquino's blessings—must be starting to look real good.
In defiance of Mrs. Arroyo's medical abstract, the institutional judgment of a premier medical center like St. Luke's, and the history of her recent surgical operations—the longest of which, she corrected my last column, was not seven hours, but SIXTEEN hours—Health Secretary Enrique Ona, after just one visit to her, and with much hemming and hawing, has concluded that she is fine and that she can be properly attended to here. Of course, to date, the administration has not yet produced the name of a single local specialist who can properly diagnose her rare bone disorder. I'm told that even in the United States, there are only five such specialists—which is why she wants to visit those other European countries as well.
I had expected Dr. Ona to place more value on his doctor's oath and ethics—especially the part that talks about protecting a patient's life and health above all else. Sadly, when it comes to political expediency, though, it seems that I was mistaken about the good doctor.
Joining this comedic cast, comes now LP Senator Kiko Pangilinan, who's very forthright about injecting yellow politics into what should be a discussion solely of human life and human rights. Per the honorable senator: "If Mrs. Arroyo has been untruthful to us in the past about major issues affecting our country, from governance to the state of our coffers, what's to stop her from being less than truthful about her own health?"
C'mon, Kiko. Don't piss on your UP law diploma like that. Just because you turned your fraternity T-shirt inside out on campus during that rumble all those moons ago, that doesn't mean you have to go this far to prove your loyalty in tight situations, especially to someone as undeserving of it as this President.
* * *
My redoubtable fellow columnist Bobi Tiglao adverted in his latest column to an online critique of the Aquino administration, dated October 5, that seems to have gone viral. I visited the site and left my own comments with the writer, Ben Kritz, who writes frequently on business intelligence. Here's a useful summary of what Ben had to say in his piece provocatively titled "The Philippines in the Second Aquino Era: A Slow Train Finally Derails" (http://grbusinessonline.com/wp/?p=502#comment-819)
Ben says there's a "very disturbing disconnect" between the country Aquino thinks he's creating and the one that actually exists [just like, say, the disconnect between PlayStation war games and real-life running after MILF and NPA rebels – GBO]. 's "very little evidence" that the economy and people's quality of life are moving in any direction at all.
"Key economic lifelines" are under threat. After a ban was imposed on mining permits earlier this year, the industry is now having problems with conflicting rules and higher taxes, and especially renewed attacks by the NPA. Business process outsourcing [which grew to half a million employees under Mrs. Arroyo] now suffering from lack of government attention and a hostile investment climate, and its long-term prospects were recently rated by research firm Ovum as "insignificant" compared to, say, China or Korea.
Foreign tourist arrivals were supposed to improve with the recent introduction of "limited open skies". But they've been affected by PAL's labor troubles, NAIA's latest citation as the world's worst airport, the downgrade of local aviation safety to Category 2 [keeping away especially the Europeans],and, most recently, announcements by KLM and Delta that they'll be ending or reducing their direct service to Manila if government doesn't eliminate the burdensome taxes they have to pay.
While basic macro indicators—balance of payments, domestic savings, exchange rate, debt ratings—remain "fairly stable" [which can only be the outcome of years of hard work, as demonstrated by the previous administration], downtrend has already begun in infrastructure and higher education—whose budgets were severely reduced by Aquino—as well as in innovation, where the country recently scored zero in the latest IT industry index. Ben cites a Business Mirror columnist who speculated that "either the government is afraid of the future and doesn't want to act, or is incompetent and doesn't know how to act".
Wow. That's a pretty heavy rap. But there's still something even worse than either a fearful or an incompetent government—and that's a government that's both, with no balls and no brains. The latter we could already guess from a totally unimpressive record in academic, professional, and public lives. The former, though, is quickly emerging as the only way to explain a President who reserves all of his firepower—not for mass murderers, not for Mindanao and communist rebels, not for his KKK buddies—but for his diminutive female predecessor, to the point of holding her life and health hostage to his perverse agendas, while hiding behind the various Cabinet puppets he pulls on his strings.
Ben closes the piece with a gloomy prognosis: "Having promised to speed up the train, Aquino instead has let it run off the tracks entirely, and is apparently unaware that continuing to pass messages to the people waiting at the next station that "the train is on its way" are going to be announcements made to an empty platform, probably very soon."
Cautionary words, indeed, and well worth pondering, as this particular train of state struggles to make its way over Aquino's matuwid na daan.
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Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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