It’s just not going to happen. Like so many other promises Noynoy Aquino made before and since his election as President, he’s not going to allow himself to get run over by a train by the end of this year.
I’ve been replaying a video of Aquino vowing in 2013 that he and his transportation secretary, Joseph Emilio Abaya, would throw themselves under a train if, by the end of 2015, the Light Rail Transit Line 1 extension project still isn’t finished. Aquino made the bold statement while stumping for his Team PNoy in Cavite, where he promised that 250,000 residents of the vote-rich province would be riding the extended LRT Line 1 from Baclaran to Bacoor, Cavite every day.
“I don’t have a thick face, I was taught to be a simple person and truthful to everyone I talk to,” Aquino bragged, in his now-familiar self-praising manner. “My father taught me that when I give my word, whether it’s difficult or easy, it has to happen.”
Then Aquino made his vow to complete the extension of the train line: “If this doesn’t happen, Secretary Abaya, who is overseeing the project, is here; the two of us maybe will let ourselves get run over by a train.”
It’s just over a week before the year ends, and some people have started a countdown to the day when Aquino will make good on his promise. And regardless of what Aquino’s father taught him, the people of Cavite are about as near to enjoying rides on the extended LRT Line 1 as they were when Imelda Marcos built the original train system nearly 35 years ago.
I don’t think that Aquino is crazy enough to throw himself under a train just because he promised to do so, if he failed to do something. And I’ve been told that Aquino’s ever-industrious spokesmen have taken the position that the President was merely joking when he made the vow.
That is not my point, even if I don’t see how dragging his dead father’s name and his teachings to him are part of a morbid attempt at hilarity on Aquino’s part. All I’m saying is that Aquino has made so many promises that he never had any intention of keeping over the years, like extending the LRT’s Line 1.
Aquino, after all, is on record to have promised a Freedom of Information Act, self-sufficiency in rice, a showcase Public-Private Partnership program that would bankroll and complete all infrastructure and other capital-intensive government projects and many other things. None of these things ever happened, for reasons only Aquino really knows.
As for the consortium that won the contract for extending the LRT’s Line 1, Aquino himself has admitted that it is now trying to collect P7.5 billion from the government for the latter’s failure to comply with contractual obligations made for the P65-billion project. And in a bizarre twist, Abaya, bless his incompetent heart, has been exposed as the collector of the consortium for the payment of the fine.
All of this, you could argue, is enough reason to throw yourself under an onrushing train, if only for shaming the memory of your father, who supposedly taught you to not have a thick face and to always tell the truth. But I still believe that Aquino will not commit suicide in this manner—to say nothing of dragging Abaya with him in a double railway suicide if he ever does.
So I am forced to conclude that Aquino merely has a very strange sense of humor on top of a penchant for making promises he has no intention of keeping. And that, in the same way that he got elected by trotting out his dead parents at every opportunity, he never hesitated to use Ninoy and Cory, if that’s what it takes for him to get what he wants since his election.
If you never hear Aquino mention the LRT Line 1 extension ever again, don’t be surprised. No one wants to be reminded of how wrong he’s been, regardless of who his parents were and what they taught him.
And if this sounds like a joke to you, maybe you’re one of the few who still adores the President no matter what he does or fails to do. But you’ll pardon the rest of us, I hope, if we’re not laughing.
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The Philippine Council of Management Research Institutes recently honored independent Philippine tobacco manufacturing concern Mighty Corp. with its Outstanding Corporation of the Year award. The wholly Filipino-owned company received the award on the occasion of the PCMRI’s 40th National Management Congress held in Makati City.
PCMRI is a federation of professional and technological societies, management developments, institutions, members of the academe, business and professional managers dedicated to the development of management and improvement of its practices.