If I were Aquino…

FOR all the many bad things people say of President Benigno C. Aquino, he cannot be so dull-witted and moronic as not to realize that he’s got in his hands an enormous power by which to prevent himself from getting the terrible fate he dumped upon his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The lady president, so robust and energetic at the forefront of the world war on terrorism in the heyday of her administration, now languishes in detention, albeit in a hospital, all of this Aquino’s making. So Aquino knows all too well that you don’t have to be found guilty of plunder to be jailed; all it takes to do so is a ruling by the Ombudsman of probable cause of the plunder charges against you. This was the case with Senators Bong Revilla, Jinggoy Estrada and Juan Ponce Enrile, no matter that the octogenarian former Senate President has been freed from detention on bail. The point here is that Aquino’s Administration has not been exactly simon pure. In fact to the contrary, and under a hostile next president, he appears headed for exactly the same fate that has befallen GMA and a host of other Aquino political enemies.

Would the Napoles pork barrel scam have materialized without concurrence from the Chief Executive? The huge fund releases executed in the gargantuan graft scheme was undertaken through nothing else than the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), and it was very highly probable that those fund releases could not have taken place if Aquino had not agreed to them. And then again when finally Napoles decided to surrender after a time of being a fugitive, who did she give herself up to but President Benigno C. Aquino? Why Aquino? She was a grand scammer, all right, but still a criminal whose pettiness of character just didn’t deserve such grand presidential attention. Unless there was something truly grand indeed that could be talked about just between her and the President of the Republic of the Philippines. What that something was would be up for the next president to uncover – not for anything less than a patriotic duty to see justice through for all.