You can no longer threaten us, Sir

Still reeling from the deafening calls for his resignation following the January 25 Mamasapano, Maguindanao massacre, which took the lives of 44 elite policemen, after he denied them reinforcement, President B. S. Aquino 3rd took a swipe at his critics (“detractors,” said one newspaper) in his speech to the Philippine Military Academy graduates Sunday, saying he would not hesitate to “run them over” (the original Filipino word is “sasagasaan kayo”), if they continued to “put the people at risk.”

No more pathetic words have been spoken since Aquino last spoke to the nation about the ill-starred Operation Exodus. Once again Aquino was beside himself. Between him and the PMA class valedictorian, who also addressed the graduates, the latter was decidedly more presidential. Not only did Aquino show a manifestly inverted sense of reality, he also showed he did not know his audience at all, or the people he was threatening to run over.