What Time does not tell
|
| |
As I have said many times in the past, Billy Esposo never ceases to amaze me. It seems he has a lot more
effusions to give Noynoy Aquino not from an objective mind but his fat belly.
The latest is about how he positioned his jaundiced adulation in turn for us to digest –“The Noynoy Aquino
political saga has transcended from local to international — courtesy of the same publication that hailed his
mother as the “icon and saint of Democracy’.”
My ass, that issue was not even an international but just the Asia edition, and it is not the first time that Time
magazine has dealt with an oddity, definitely not with Noynoy who is a sheer hatchling in an empty shell who
could be only a feet away from the top elective position of our nation.
But at least Esposo himself acceoted that Noynoy made it to the Time cover because of his “mama”.
I mean if Manny Pacquiao recently made it to the Time cover because of his earned supremacy in the boxing
world, why not Noynoy Aquino for an impending disaster he is about to inflict on Philippine politics?
This, like many, that comes out of Time is not always positive. In May 2000, the magazine earned a public
rebuke from President Joseph Estrada, after it published lurid scandals wracking the Palace, his extra-
marital affairs and his dealings with his business associates in the face of widening poverty and insurgency.
In January 1982, sportsman Tommy Manotoc was kidnapped. Time magazine scooped everyone else
because the way it told the story was not the way Malacañang had portrayed the disappearance—that
communists were responsible.
The great Filipino journalist Nelly Sindayen did this all the time – “The woman in malong, who was
responsible for putting Philippine movers and shakers on the Time cover for over three decades,” as
Fernando del Mundo eulogized her in the Philippine Daily Inquirer April of last year when she died.
“As Nelly told it, Tommy, then aged 31, had gotten a quickie divorce in the Dominican Republic from his wife,
the former Miss International Aurora Pijuan, and secretly married Marcos’ oldest daughter Imee, then 21, in
the United States,” wrote del Mundo.
On the contrary, Esposo, always generous when it benefits his personal candidate for the next Philippine
presidency, tell only the yellow half of any truth but here in the process inadvertently admitting Noynoy’s lack
of qualification so as to be honored by this American publication.
The article was penned by Ishaan Tharoor, calling “Noynoy Aquino ‘an unlikely man of the moment’ which
was exactly how the country and the world saw his mother Cory in 1986.” I agree, both Cory and Noynoy are
definite oddities in Philippine history.
Today, as we are almost the eve of the May 2010 elections, there is a better than fair chance that phantasma
rather than reality could rule, repeating another curse in our history at exactly the same time when sobriety
instead of hype could get us out of the conundrum of more than a decade of corrupt and incompetent
governance.
Esposo’s comparison of Noynoy to another historical oddity - Barack Obama, of course is not totally
baseless but is neither the whole truth. The fat chance Esposo is angling for is to make it appear that
Noynoy can approximate an Obama. But look that spin could be true, but not in the positive light.
Noynoy is one of the authors of the controversial Reproductive Health Bill here just as Obama is the architect
of the contentious US Health Care Reform Act.
That legislation is now being opposed as unconstitutional by no less than 16 state attorneys-general while
36 state legislatures are finding ways for their respective jurisdictions to be exempt from its application.
Today, we see America outrageously politically-divided in the midst of a bitter recession second only to the
Great Depression of the late 1930s.
Give it a little more time and soon, you will see unprecedented numbers of TEA (Tax-Enough Already)
Parties sprouting like mushroom all over the United States and growing into a multitude of TEA caravans
with Washington DC as destination. Never since the days of slavery, had America smelled rebellion
becoming part of its lifestyle.
Likewise, Noynoy’s RH bill presents a clear and imminent danger to dividing Philippine society.
And as if the Time cover was a launching pad, two major Manila broadsheets were insinuating that Noynoy
is the American boy in this race, an association calculated by Aquino spinners to settle better with the
Filipino populace. The candidate himself admitted that foreigners have been connecting to their camp, even
diplomats.
I am not surprised. Even before I left Northern Virginia and came to Manila to personally observe this
presidential campaign myself, I already got wind that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has taken an
interest in Noynoy because Loida Nicolas Lewis, one of the richest Filipino-Americans and Hillary’s friend,
has been lobbying for him in Washington DC and raising money for Noynoy Fund throughout the United
States.
Operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have also been flying in as early as when Cory Aquino
was dying. American governments have always liked village idiots as heads of states, anyway, so that they
can always tweak them in favor of their colonial interests.
American curiosity is even challeneged as Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has been quite successful for the past
six years in balancing her American and the Chinese cards, perhaps one of the few good things she has
done for this country.
Yet Noynoy, who is entirely clueless about foreign policy, appears to want to polarize himself to only the
Americans, afterall he openly admits that the happiest moments of his life was spent in Boston where his
whole family lived, while his father was in exile. What does he know about China anyway?
Yet the Liberal Party has time and again overstated itself whenever it attacks the Manuel Villar, as the China
card in this elections, due to its narrow-minded reason that the Nacionalista Party is hosting Satur Ocampo
and Lisa Maza, two left-leaning congressmen, in its senatorial ticket.
Lately, Noynoy camp even floated that malicious balloon that because Jose Maria Sison, the top Filipino
communist, endorsed Villar for president, the latter is a red coddler.
The polarity does not cut alongside ideologies in this elections.
There those in the Nacionalista ticket who are perceived to be either right-wingers or ultra conservative like
General Querubin, one of the few recipients of our country’s medal of valor, a real and living Filipino hero,
and BongBong Marcos, one of the country’s best governors and the son of the late Ferdinand Marcos, the
nemesis of the Aquino family.
A lot of people are joining the Villar bandwagon because they connect to his populism. The brown taipan
afterall was born to a poor family and grew from rags to riches.
His enterpreneural story inspires many especially as he exhorts his audience to rise from their humble
beginnings through “sipag at tiyaga” (hardwork and perservance) just as he did. They want to walk his walk,
not just his talk.
This morning, all of the mayors and local officials of Romblon province left the Lakas Party and defected to
the Nacionalista, leaving on the provincial governor behind.
The other day, sixteen congressmen consisting the Northern Luzon Alliance in the Lower House, led by
Nueva Vizcaya lawmaker Carlos Padilla, announced their impending defection to the Villar camp. Of course,
Chavit Singson, the powerful governor of Ilocos Sur province had already gone ahead a few weeks ago.
The Liberal Party, of course, also benefited from a significant defection last week in the person of a “Kampi”
stalwart and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s top economic adviser , Joey Salceda, Noynoy’s classmate who is
running for reelection as governor of Albay.
Unfortunately, what the Liberal Party considered an asset has now backfired because when it made Salceda
its regional chairman for the Bicol region, at least two Liberal congressional candidates led in dropping
Noynoy Aquino as their presidential candidate. One was Liwayway Chato of Camarines Norte and the other
is Edcel Lagman of one of the districts of Albay.
Salceda’s defection has now created a confusion in the Liberal Party in Albay, given the common knowledge
that he is the “protector” of all of the First Family’s newly acquired investments in Albay and Sorsogon
provinces placed under the name of Arroyo son, Dato.
The outgoing Albay governor is also a confessed homosexual and a suspected pedophile often seen with
young boys in tow – hardly consistent to the Liberal Party’s claim to moral ascendancy.
Of course LP vice presidential candidate Mar Roxas has earlier announced that they would have cheated if
they do not win the election. Something that Time magazine will not also quote because of its stupidity.
Finally I agree with Esposo’s claim that the Time issue indeed has been an added impetus but to the
oligarchs and the upper and upper middle class who are already rooting for Aquino. The publication is
hardly read by 99% of Filipinos who can ill-afford even to buy even a tabloid..
They are not even asking the question posed by the article: “The Next Aquino: Can Noynoy Save the
Philippines?” because they are busy saving themselves from the possibility of an ominous Noynoy
presidency. #
|
|
