The phrase ‘the elephant in the room’ refers to a situation in which the participants in a public discussion refrain from frontally addressing, but instead merely tiptoe around, an issue whose examination is central to the success and value of the discussion. There is an elephant in the room in the current discussions, in the hustings and other public places, regarding the Presidential candidacy of Vice President Jejomar Binay.
In Binay’s case the elephant in the room has been the Vice President’s obdurate unwillingness to make a response to the string of serious allegations of wrongdoing—illegal awards of contracts, overpricing, laundering, among other things—made against him by his former subordinates in the course of hearings before the Senate Committee on Accountability of Public Officers (better known as the Blue Ribbon Committee).
Yet the other Presidential candidates, opposition politicians and mass-media folk who have participated with Jejomar Binay in public discussions of national issues have been conducting themselves as though there were no elephant in the room where the discussions have been held. They have been directing all sorts of questions at Binay—on issues like health, drugs, public order and education, for example—but have refrained from pursuing the one issue that has far-reaching implications for the government’s capacity to provide infrastructure and public services adequately.
These are very serious charges. If proven to be true, they can send Vice President Binay for a long stretch in jail.
Consider the first of the scheduled Presidential debates, the one held on February 21 in Cagayan de Oro City.
The people who framed the questions for the five candidates—presumably the sponsoring organizations—asked Jejomar Binay one solitary question that had a bearing on corruption, namely, the one that asked the Vice President how he came to own allegedly so much property after only 30 years in office. Once Binay had delivered his answer—that he inherited them from his parents or acquired them by dint of his law practice and his wife’s medical practice—all the parties, those offstage and onstage, moved on, to ask about and discuss the other major national issues. Leaving the enormous elephant in the room asking, “Hey guys, how about me? Don’t I get any attention?”
I don’t blame the elephant. He looms so large in any room that hosts a public discussion in which Vice President Binay is a participant. The creature is so large that one cannot possibly ignore his presence, but almost everyone, including P-Noy Aquino, have managed to do so.
There is an elephant in the room in this Presidential election, and he must not be ignored.
Filipinos who believe that corruption is an important issue—indeed the No. 1 issue—in the 2016 election cannot be blamed if they are at a loss to understand why Jejomar Binay appears to be the object of kid-gloves treatment.
Or, to put it another way, why the elephant in the room is being treated as though he weren’t there.
To be sure, it is not impossible that Vice President Binay is innocent of any of the wrongdoings that he has been accused of. Perhaps he is innocent. But any third-year law student who has mastered the provisions on evidence in the Rules of Court is bound to say that the Vice President has so much explaining to do.
This is why millions of Filipinos are deeply uncomfortable with the candidacy of Jejomar Binay for the highest position in this country. A President is supposed to be the father of all Filipinos and the exemplar of good behavior and lawful conduct. Yet Binay refuses to answer allegations that, because they are well documented, cannot be dismissed as mere “political persecution.”
There are barely two months left in the present campaign, and the elephant in the room is getting restless. He does not want to be ignored any longer.
During the campaign homestretch, let everyone, from PNoy Aquino on down, stop ignoring the elephant in the room and start addressing the all-important issue that he represents. That issue is corruption.
E-mail: rudyromero777@yahoo.com