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Philippines
Friday, March 29, 2024

Unworthy of respect

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PRESIDENT Aquino is caught up in a morass of his own making, and the more he flails about to save himself, the deeper he sinks.

With public outrage still simmering over his mismanagement of the secret Mamasapano operation that killed 44 police commandos, the President did the unthinkable last week. He met behind closed doors with the widows of the 44 men whom he had sent to their deaths, then chided them for their impatience when they demanded justice for their fallen husbands.

Apparently disturbed by the repeated questions about what was being done to make the killers pay, the President blurted out: “Why, what is justice for you? Aren’t we doing it already? What do you want me to do, get the fingerprints of all our enemies? They are so many. Just so we can find out who killed your relatives?”

The President also dismayed the families of the Fallen 44 by asserting that he knew how they felt because he, too, had lost his father—more than 30 years ago. This loss, he added, made them “even” (“tabla-tabla na tayo”)—as if the widows had done him some wrong.

In the same session, the President likened the failure of the Armed Forces to provide timely reinforcements to the police commandos to friends texting each other to meet at a mall.

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“If we suppose you text your friend so that you’d meet at the [Mall of Asia], is it that easy for you to go there immediately?” Aquino asked the widows.

Instead of admitting his own role in the operation, the President continued to lay all the blame on the sacked commander of the Special Action Force (SAF), trying once again to peddle the fiction that this lone police officer planned, funded, approved, and carried out the ill-fated operation to capture one of the world’s most wanted terrorists.

The Palace spin doctors first sought to deny the reported exchanges. Then, when it became apparent that the widows had no reason to lie and more accounts of the meeting began to appear in social media networks, the Palace castigated the press for focusing on the emotional exchanges instead of the benefits that the widows and families would receive.

But the damage has been done, and nothing the Palace hacks can say can cover up the President’s complete lack of empathy, narcissism, intolerance of criticism, and compulsive lying—characteristics that are normally attributed to sociopaths.

As members of a constitutional democracy, we all are expected to show respect for the presidency. But given Mr. Aquino’s unbecoming behavior, we can no longer afford the same respect to the person who occupies that office.

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