(Continued from yesterday)
One of the funniest accusations hurled by the supporters of Noynoy Aquino against incoming President Rodrigo Duterte is the supposed “divisive” words and attitude of the new chief executive. Funny, because it was Aquino, compared to any other leader in recent Philippine politics, who took divisiveness and partisanship to their most extreme lengths.
The outward manifestation of Aquino’s obsession with partisan politics, of course, was his constant display of the yellow ribbon on his chest. And unlike any other leader, who wore a Philippine flag to instill a sense of unity among a naturally divided people, Aquino flashed his ribbon to remind everyone that those who did not swear allegiance to his family’s political banner could expect nothing from him.
Aquino never understood that he was elected president of an entire country, not just of the people who voted for him or who professed—even if only for convenience—his Yellow politics. And so, he relentlessly pursued former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Chief Justice Renato Corona, Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and everyone else whose politics he did not agree with and whom he had decided that he should destroy.
Aquino’s pathological aversion to political opposition coexisted with his constant heaping of blame on its representatives. He blamed all his woes on his predecessors, particularly Arroyo and Ferdinand Marcos Sr.; and when he decided that he could not get Corona to do what he wanted simply because he was president, he bought Congress with state funds to impeach and remove the nation’s top jurist.
The purchase of both Houses of Congress through the Disbursement Acceleration Program in order to remove Corona resulted in Aquino’s greatest legal vulnerability. And many have already predicted that if Aquino is going to land in jail like his two immediate predecessors, it’s going to be because of his creation of DAP—which was misused by Aquino and his budget wizard Florencio Abad in order to remove Corona.
Ultimately, Aquino practiced a thoroughly exclusive brand of politics which he thought, in his lack of sophistication, was actually reformist. He failed to consider that all his “allies” were actually the same turncoats and self-interested politicians who survived every administration and who would leave him, his chosen successor and his party as soon as the next big political thing came along.
And because Aquino did not really understand politics, he never saw the defeat of Mar Roxas coming, despite the fact that all pre-election surveys showed this to be inevitable. In fact, when Aquino finally realized his mistake, he practically ensured Roxas’ loss by calling for an impromptu “marriage” between Roxas and Grace Poe to stop Duterte.
Aquino thought his election as president made him, overnight, into a political genius. He leaves office with his yellow ribbon today, still ignorant of what he did wrong.
* * *
Any discussion of Aquino’s presidency would not be complete if it did not look into his leadership (or the lack of it) in times of crisis. And from the killing of a bunch of Chinese tourists in Manila’s Rizal Park less than two months into his term to the beheading just last week of a second Canadian national held captive by the Abu Sayyaf group, it is safe to say that Aquino’s first impulse is to simply disappear when the going gets rough.
We should have expected this, really, when Aquino finally arrived at the Luneta before dawn on that August day in 2010, smiling for the cameras like a dog, as the Chinese said, after the first massacre. By the time he was telling a Tacloban businessman to be thankful because he was still alive after Typhoon “Yolanda” struck, Aquino’s constant disappearances (even when he was physically present) should have become clear to all.
But no, we had to wait for Aquino to skip the arrival honors for the 44 SAF troopers whom he sent to their deaths in Mamasapano last year, in order to pursue a Malaysian terrorist that the Americans had ordered him to capture. And some of us still expressed surprise when Aquino declared that he had not even been told that thousands of starving farmers had been massing on a highway in North Cotabato, and that he learned of the incident only after policemen fired upon the protesters.
Aquino is always on top of a crisis situation, his spokespersons say, monitoring it from God knows where. But no one really believes that anymore, especially when they see the prime minister of Canada confirm the beheading of one of his citizens thousands of kilometers away in Sulu, when no one really knows where the Philippine president is or if he’s heard of the news.
This president is never there when the people need him. And in a crisis situation, he disappears from view altogether instead of being the first on the scene.
Filipinos, it seems, elected a full-time partisan politician in 2010. They forgot to choose someone who could be relied on to rally the people—and whom people would rally around—when times got hard, because Aquino certainly wasn’t that. (Concluded tomorrow)