ONE of the most infuriating characteristics that we will remember about the Aquino administration long after it has faded into obscurity and inconsequence is its readiness to inflict pain on the people and to look on indifferently as they suffer.
Contrary to the President’s threadbare claim that the people are his boss, Mr. Aquino and his Cabinet members see common folk as an inconvenience that can be shoved aside whenever it suits their purposes.
This attitude was certainly evident Monday when authorities closed the entire stretch of Roxas Boulevard so that delegates to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) meetings could travel smoothly and securely on empty roads, while thousands of angry commuters were given no choice but to walk for more than an hour from Parañaque City to Manila to get to work. Adding insult to injury, the government again urged people to stay home to avoid the traffic caused by the road closures if they had no important business—as if the unfortunates walking to work under a punishing sun were out for a leisurely stroll, instead of trying to get to work because Monday had been left out of a string of holidays the President declared just to clear the streets for Apec. Elsewhere in the metropolis, motorists and commuters suffered hours-long traffic snarls because the authorities had closed off two of the six lanes on either side of Edsa so that Apec delegates in their motorcades could travel from point A to point B without stopping, while the rest of us fumed in our vehicles.
These are the latest examples of the government’s insensitivity to public suffering but they are hardly the worst.
Only recently, President Aquino and his anointed candidate for president in the elections next year, Manuel Roxas II, dismissed out of hand legislation that would have provided relief to millions of low- and middle-income employees, who see a third of their salaries go to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, making Filipino workers the most highly taxed workers in Southeast Asia.
In rejecting the House and Senate bills, Aquino and Roxas asserted that the government could ill afford to lose an estimated P30 billion in tax revenues for a year—but neglected to say that underspending by this administration had reached P526 billion from 2011 to 2014, or that more than P1 billion in donations for typhoon victims sit idle in government banks, according to the Commission on Audit.
Never mind if millions of hardworking Filipinos are seeing their take-home pay eroded by rising prices and by high taxes that provided them no commensurate benefits, or that tens of thousands who survived Typhoon “Yolanda” two years ago still live in temporary shelters. Mr. Aquino and his economic advisers must have the funds on hand—just in case they decide to use it.
This pathological lack of empathy was perhaps most evident two years ago, when President Aquino all but told a businessman in Tacloban City to stop complaining about the breakdown of peace and order in the aftermath of Yolanda, which killed more than 6,000 people and devastated huge areas of Eastern Visayas. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?” he told the flabbergasted businessman at a meeting with local officials to discuss relief and rescue operations. Not to be outdone, Mr. Aquino’s protege, Roxas, came up with his own one-liner, when Tacloban officials were reluctant to turn over their authority to the national government: “Bahala ka sa buhay mo” or “It’s up to you, it’s your life.”
Why should the people care for a government that treats them like second-class citizens in their own country? When this week’s brouhaha over Apec finally blows over and the roads are reopened, the President and his minions will no doubt beat their chests in triumph so loudly that they will block out all the criticism for inflicting pain on a long-suffering public.