“If our president was misrepresented, in effect, fooled by his men (and a woman), what does that make of him?“
FLOODGATE, it appears, is traceable to Malacanang and Congress.
Let me backtrack: on July 28, the president shouted “Mahiya naman kayo!” – prefacing the now famous words.
Days before, massive floods causing loss of lives and properties made a mockery of his previous SONA about his DPWH completing 5,500 flood control projects.
Damage control for the fourth SONA had to be made: inoculate Malacanang from the rising anger of the public. Hindi pwedeng mapahiya ang hari.
To bolster the president’s new resolve to go after crooks, his propaganda tacticians thought of “Isumbong mo sa Pangulo,” another nice gimmick.
This got the legislature to mount investigations galore. In the HoR, they assigned it it to a former leftist who was fired by Duterte in his time. His party list, once “owned” by a Bicol politician, has been taken over, “bought” by Zaldy Co, according to a congressman.
But in the Senate, the Blue Ribbon chair could not be conscripted, so they replaced the leadership and installed a new chair, someone whose independence was highly regarded.
Still, things did not match up. Instead, there were a series of reactions, of cut and paste tactics. The witnesses sang “disintunado,” from contractors to DPWH engineers, so another ploy was invented – a toothless Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI).
Reputable men and a lady were conscripted, their motivations likely pure, and placed their trust in the president’s sincerity.
But the obfuscation by principal players continued. The “witnesses” kept changing their stories, intent on saving themselves, or at least minimizing the extent of their criminal participation. Worse, some were pressured to change their lyrics because the most sacred of cows had to be untouched.
The criminal syndicates in the HoR were strangely less pilloried by the Blue Ribbon, feasting instead on fellow senators. Even the ICI investigations came into question, muddled further by a loquacious secretary of justice who was promoted to term-clad Ombudsman.
The central figure, the guy who should know all the skeletons in the most criminal budget in history, was nowhere to be seen. Mamacita, donde esta Zaldy Co?
Then when Co sensed that he was to be made the fall guy, while his “bosses” were being spared, a la God save the King, he opened up with a series of “confessions” on the internet.
He was sacked as appropriations chair last Jan. 2025, and only an idiot would believe he resigned for medical reasons. He was not in the HoR when the words “Mahiya…” rang, so he could not hypocritically join the ovation.
But he collected aces in his sleeve, “just in case,” and now uses the internet like karaoke.
“No probative value,” “come home and face the music,” the waggoners circled around the king chanted. They forget a cardinal rule in communication — perception is reality.
Co’s logic may be faulted, his statements lacking foolproof legal ground as of now. He has to substantiate his charges, preferably in the country, and this writer agrees.
The yellow collaborators who want to preserve the “kingdom” because they just hate the Constitutional successor, debunk Zaldy and his song.
“Why insert in the bicam when the president is author of the NEP?” they ask. Simple, mga BBS (Bilib na Bilib sa Sarili, a term borrowed from Yorme).
In the “president’s budget” he exposes his hand. In the bicam with its smallest committee, you need to conspire with only two or three people. And Zaldy was their “trusted” boy.
But now it seems all the president’s men, just like Watergate in Richard Nixon’s time, were ordering Co, “by authority of the president,” or so Ping Lacson now reveals. Not even the president’s men, but the men of the president’s men.
For Zaldy, he knew that getting his colleagues to sign the impeachment complaint required promises of more pork, so the instructions were credible. Payment time, with elections forthcoming.
The president’s men had reasons to “insert” 100 billion for Zaldy to manipulate. So Co and his small bicam had to slash from Philhealth, from DepEd, wherever, to accommodate the president’s order, as relayed by the president’s men.
So the president’s men misrepresented their boss? The president’s men pocketed all the “contractual obligations?”
I remember what the Russian president said in The Sum of all Fears, when some rogue general ordered a dangerous attack that could trigger a war with the US.
Said Pres. Nemerov, played by Ciaran Hinds in that movie: “I would rather be called guilty than incompetent.”
If our president was misrepresented, in effect, fooled by his men (and a woman), what does that make of him?
“Kind-hearted,” Lacson describes our president.
Used because he is a “user,” the sister rued.
