(Conclusion)
“Buhay pa naman kayo, di ba?” a sarcastic Noynoy Aquino told a businessman who had dared to complain to him about the sad state of affairs in Tacloban City after typhoon “Yolanda” hit. And that haughty, condescending remark from the president washed away any remaining doubts among most Filipinos about his real feelings towards the people he called his “bosses,” meaning you and me.
We were not Aquino’s bosses, ever. His real bosses were, in no particular order: the oligarchs and the subservient media who helped him get power and preserve it; his Cabinet men, whom he defended to the very end of his term even if they robbed the country blind; and his political allies, whom he rewarded with pork and pelf while he persecuted and destroyed the opposition.
It took some time—years, in fact—for the people to wise up to Noynoy’s fakery and sugary (if nicotine-stained) tongue. And when they did, they decided to turn down Aquino’s offer to continue as before by rejecting his chosen candidate.
Of course, if you don’t listen to anything but the Aquino reality distortion channel, you’d believe, as Aquino himself does, that the victory of Rodrigo Duterte was not really a repudiation of his supposed legacy. And you’d take heart in the fact that Leni Robredo, the Liberal Party’s Great Bicolana Hope, is just a heartbeat—or the lack of it, really, on Duterte’s part—away from another Yellow Restoration.
The undeniable truth is, Aquino and his followers have never really thought highly of the people. Like elitists everywhere, they know they need the people to win elections—but they have never trusted them to lead themselves, something that the Yellowists believe is a privilege that only they have.
And so, when pro-people candidates like Duterte or Joseph Estrada grab the people’s imagination, the elite can always be trusted to be backing some other candidate. And that candidate will most likely be one of their own, like Noynoy or Mar Roxas.
But the people, as the saying goes, can only be fooled some of the time. And when they saw that Noynoy was only paying them lip service, doing everything in his power to preserve the wealth of the elite and to keep the poor impoverished, it became simply a matter of time before he was unceremoniously sent packing back to his mother’s house on Times Street.
And yes, I’m glad we’re still alive to see Aquino go. That, after all, is more than you can say about the thousands who died because of Yolanda or the 44 troopers killed in Mamasapano, Maguindanao.
* * *
If you ever believed Aquino when he called you his boss, you’re not alone. But by yesterday, when Noynoy stepped down from office, you can also be forgiven if you only felt like you’ve been had all this time.
Because if you and I were really Aquino’s bosses, he would never have allowed the destruction of the perfectly functioning Metro Manila commuter railway system. He would never have claimed that traffic was a sign of economic growth, thus giving all his officials involved in solving it a license to ignore the problem.
If you and I were really Aquino’s bosses, he would not have allowed the airport to become the den of thieves, scammers and incompetents that it has become under his term. He would have fired that relative of his at the airport, for making that facility the world’s worst and for planting bullets like it was the latest cash crop (which it was, really).
If you and I were Aquino’s bosses, he would have given us license plates, drivers’ licenses and sticker tags, like we used to before. He would actually have built just one runway, one bridge, one new road or one new flyover in Metro Manila over six years.
If you and I were Aquino’s bosses, he would have fired all those officials of his who had proven to be corrupt, incompetent or both. He would not have defended them to high heavens, allowing them to say “I serve at the pleasure of the president,” which is code for “I’m his friend, there’s nothing you can do to get rid of me.”
If you and I were Aquino’s bosses, he would not have illegally bought Congress with our money just to get rid of a chief justice he detested—but who never committed an impeachable offense. He would not have ordered his justice secretary to defy the Supreme Court, just to keep his predecessor in jail.
If you and I were Aquino’s bosses, he would not have told us to basically eat GDP growth and increased FDI instead of actual food. He would not have borrowed from abroad to give money to the poor, when he claimed to have so much money saved.
We were never Aquino’s bosses. That was just Aquino attempting to pull the wool over our heads—which he succeeded in doing for a long time, thanks to his enablers in the fawning, oligarch-friendly media.
But we are now, thank God, rid of Noynoy, because his time is up and we decided that we have no use for his chosen successor. So, goodbye, Noynoy.
May you and your patronizing, condescending, faux-populist kind never inflict yourselves on us again.