The President has been on a firing tear since last week.
First to go was former Justice Assistant Secretary Moslemen Macarambon, allegedly for intervening on behalf of gold smugglers at Naia. Keeping him company was former DPWH Assistant Secretary Tingagon Umpa, allegedly for extorting commissions from contractors on projects being built in the ARMM region.
Next was a Cabinet-level official, no less, former Tourism secretary Wanda Tulfo-Teo, on account of a lucrative advertising contract from her department that was awarded to a media outfit owned by her famous brothers.
Her replacement was Berna Romulo-Puyat, the leggy and brainy daughter of former GMA-era Finance Secretary Bert Romulo. But despite her long stint as an undersecretary of Agriculture, Puyat was reportedly moved to tears by the depth of the corruption she had encountered inside her new agency.
Not surprisingly, she has moved immediately to suspend all DoT projects pending CoA audits, question all foreign trips by her subordinates, and—borrowing a page from the new Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra—requested the courtesy resignations of all the senior officials under her.
As of writing, Department of Transportation Assistant Secretary Mark Tolentino was in the process of also being fired by the President, allegedly for indiscriminately dropping Duterte’s name. Duterte has clearly developed an allergy to this kind of name-dropping, much as PNoy in his time, and to his credit, developed an allergy to “wang-wang.” Small things like this ought to be noted and felicitated.
But the President isn’t done yet. As of writing, he was reportedly preparing to put five more heads on the chopping block, including two more Cabinet secretaries and the Government Corporate Counsel. He’s taken to referring to miscreant officials as “scalawags,” a term that used to be reserved for rogue policemen. He obviously sees no difference between the two.
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With all this frenetic cleaning-up of the proverbial Augean stables, I was amused to come across a social media post referring to Duterte as “the king of corruption.” Against all the evidence we’ve just discussed, this is the screed that the yellows still hold on to.
It’s a way of thinking that’s shared by the likes of Senator Trillanes who invented a non-existent COA report just to malign the President’s communications staff, or former CJ Davide who thinks that changing the Constitution is a “descent into hell,” or the human rights activists who insist that the number of alleged EJKs exceeds 20,000, a statistic that they simply pulled out of thin air.
Yellow-think and yellow-speak are a bizarre mix of fantasy, illogic, and simple idiocy. But it’s what’s being pushed now on at least three fronts by the yellow horde, who are reportedly wallowing these days in a trough of money, courtesy of certain non-Chinese tycoons, among others.
The first front is the beatification of former Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno as the yellow movement’s latest martyr, inheritor of the somewhat soiled mantle from Leila de Lima. She’s been taking to the streets and campuses, comparing Duterte’s rule to the martial law years, daring him to resign, and yelling “Tama na, lalaban po tayo!” Shades of Cory, indeed—and is that Cory’s son again hiding under her skirts?
The second front is lawyers like Christian Monsod and former CJ Davide—him again?—who’ve been egging on the senators to protest over being denied their God-given right to impeach Sereno. Perhaps to make the senators feel better, some of these provocateurs are even calling for the impeachment instead of the eight justices who voted against Sereno. But even if this unlikely scenario happened, we think the senators are well aware that it would be a less—shall we say?—rewarding exercise.
The third front is, unsurprisingly, on the campuses, where it’s getting increasingly difficult to tell the faculty apart from the students based on comparable maturity. Ateneo’s president Fr Jet Villarin wants the Supreme Court to reconsider its Sereno ruling “because Jesus criticized the Pharisees for their blind and narrow obedience to the law.” Huh???
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Unfortunately, illogic isn’t confined to lawyers, politicians, or woolly-headed academics of the yellow persuasion. Let’s close with two very different examples of how illogic can take us unawares.
Out in the Paracels where the Chinese have been beefing up their defenses against the US carrier and submarine fleets, they recently landed one of their H-6K bombers for the first time. The H-6K is a top of the line, nuclear-capable bomber that, with upgrades, can fly up to 1,900 miles, putting the entire Southeast Asia within its reach.
But scary though it may sound, is this piece of news really a surprise that should send us scrambling to review our defense plans? Chinese missiles already in position from mainland Asia can also hit anywhere in the region. And the Chinese have made it clear from the start that their forward island bases provide a strategic naval deterrent that is of existential value to the Middle Kingdom.
It will be a cold day in hell before they dismantle those missiles or those bases. And so our own strategic thinking on an unwinnable war doesn’t change: We shouldn’t invite Chinese reprisal by hosting or aiding their strategic rivals.
Our second example of illogic is much closer to home and very different indeed. Jeepney operators who modernized their fleets want to charge “rush hour rates” that add one to two pesos per fare during peak hours. Clearly they’re imitating the “surge pricing” of transport network vehicles (right now that’s just Grab).
However, unlike Grab drivers who can opt out of service, jeepney drivers are franchised to ply fixed routes on fixed schedules. If “surge pricing” is thoughtlessly expanded to include every form of public transportation, we will simply be heating up inflation at a time when we’re trying to dampen it down.
It must be the current heat wave that’s going to people’s heads and frying some brains. Let’s hope it cools off before too much more damage is done.
Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.
