By ELLEN T. TORDESILLAS
FINALLY, President Aquino will speak to the people of the Philippines on the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program or DAP today, Malacañang announced.
Today is exactly two weeks after the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision declared as unconstitutional Aquino and his Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad pet project.
Malacañang sources said Aquino was stunned by the voting (13-0. Not even his appointees especially Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno sided with him!) he threw tantrums. He wants to wage war against the Supreme Court justices.
Wonder no more why House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, Jr. wants an investigation on the Judiciary Development Fund being administered by the Supreme Court.
Last Friday Aquino gave the public a preview of what he is going to say today. During the cabinet meeting on the 2015 budget, Aquino announced that he was rejecting the resignation of Abad. “I have decided not to accept his resignation. To accept his resignation is to assign to him a wrong and I cannot accept the notion that doing right by our people is wrong.”
Yesterday Abad, who was silent the past two weeks issued a statement taking responsibility for the illegal DAP which was the reason, he said, he tendered his resignation. But there was no apology or remorse for making a mockery of the budget process with the juggling of P374 billion.
He just said: Yesterday, however, before we deliberated on the proposed 2015 budget, the President announced that he would not accept my resignation. He explained that accepting it was tantamount to acknowledging wrongdoing on my end, contrary to the fact that the DAP—as conceived and implemented—proved beneficial to the country’s economy and the Administration’s bid for rapid and inclusive growth.”
We do not know what Abad means by “rapid and inclusive growth.” Definitely it does not include me and my friends, my neighbors and a lot of people I know. We also do not know what formula they used to specifically attribute to DAP their claim of “rapid and inclusive growth.”
Aquino’s doctrine of governance is a takeoff from the Florentine philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli’s “The end justifies the means.”
Cabinet members were seen applauding when Aquino announced his rejection of Abad’s resignation. The only one who was not clapping was Vice President Jejomar Binay , the housing czar.
Following Aquino’s doctrine that as long as you have good intentions, it is right, we should applaud the New People’s Army for killing soldiers who, in their mind, are agents of an oppressive regime. They say their intention is to liberate the Filipino people from oppressive forces.
We should call for the abolition of the Commission on Human Rights for criticizing Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and condemning vigilantes, who kill people without going through the justice system. The vigilantes say what they want is peace and order, which we all want.
Since good intentions is a good excuse to trash the Constitution, the late President Ferdinand Marcos should then be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani because he claims to have saved the Philippines from becoming a communist state by declaring Martial Law.
Imelda Marcos, should be given an award for building all those edifices and medical institutions – Cultural center, Philippine International Convention Center, Philippine Heart Center, National Kidney Center, and many more – all in pursuit of her wish for the Filipino people to have “The True, the Good, and the Beautiful.”
There’s an added problem though: Aquino believes he has the monopoly of good intentions.
