The 44 members of the Special Action Force who were left to die in that godforsaken cornfield in Mamasapano, Maguindanao last year looked to the skies for air support that never came. But when Kris Aquino needed a chopper to join Mar Roxas in a campaign sortie, they sent a whole squadron to go with her.
President Noynoy Aquino has justified the use by his obnoxious sister of a brace of presidential helicopters to stump for administration candidate Roxas in a provincial sortie by saying, of all things, that Kris was one of the country’s biggest taxpayers. On so many levels, this is just plain wrong.
But don’t take it from me. Listen to Aquino himself explaining his quick exoneration of his sister:
“It’s been my habit that when I’m meeting businessmen… if I need to take them in the [presidential] helicopter to dialog with them sometimes, to show them the vision… Whether as an individual taxpayer or somebody very close to me, who shared all of the burdens, I think it’s just proper that I share the successes. We shared the hardships, I also share the success,” Aquino said.
Aquino also said that Kris volunteered to help Roxas and so he asked her to join him during the campaign sortie to Dalaguete, Cebu. He said he also wanted to show his sister—like the businessmen he supposedly takes on presidential helicopter joyrides—“the result of meaningful democracy that our parents fought for.”
My only response, after I’ve picked up my jaw from off the floor, is to ask like Mayor Rodrigo Duterte once did: “Mr. President, are you on drugs?”
Before Aquino tried yesterday to douse the fire caused by Kris’ quickie trip on our dime with aviation fuel, Malacañang Palace attempted to spin the incident by saying that presidential relatives are allowed to ride official vehicles assigned to the president. Of course, that wouldn’t really work because what Kris and her brother did was to use a government vehicle for campaigning—an actionable offense, according to the Omnibus Election Code.
Aquino is obviously spinning the tale into a sightseeing tour for Kris because he knows he cannot admit that he and her sister were stumping for Mar using the chopper with the presidential seal. It’s hard to support that theory when Kris was videotaped and photographed wearing the official yellow-and-black campaign uniform of Team Roxas, a proletarian departure from her usual ultra-expensive designer outfits of the day.
The President has tried very hard to hide his campaigning for Roxas by inaugurating a road here and a bridge there just when his candidate is making a campaign stop nearby. It was obviously an oversight on his part when he allowed Kris to tag along—perhaps because he’s been doing it for so long without being called out for it.
Official resources simply cannot be used to campaign for any candidate, no matter how big the taxes paid. Besides, if Kris was such a big-shot taxpayer, you’d think she’d be able to afford her own transportation and not need a free ride at taxpayers’ expense.
No, there was no aerial tour for Kris’ benefit so she may witness the gains of democracy. There is only an unfeeling president and his family, who have been used to ruling the country for so long that they think nothing of riding presidential choppers whenever they feel like it, simply because they can.
That’s a significant achievement of the restoration of democracy, I guess. Imagine if everyone who needed airlifting was given a ride by the President himself—whether they be soldiers beset on all sides by Moro rebels, people stranded on their roofs by floods or even commuters waiting for hours in the sun to get on the MRT.
Of course, none of those people would be among the top taxpayers who can even afford to buy their own helicopters instead of bumming rides on government expense. And that makes all the difference in the world.
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Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has been slammed for his admittedly strange call for the US and Australia to cut ties with the Philippines if he is elected president, if they hate him so much. But some foreigners, like American Chamber of Commerce senior adviser John D. Forbes, really deserve to be taken down a notch or two.
Friends have related that top Duterte supporter and former agriculture secretary Carlos “Sonny” Dominguez abruptly turned his back on Forbes during a recent cocktail party after Forbes proclaimed that he has “no respect for the Filipino electorate.”
Dominguez went on social media to respond to Forbes, posting a photo of the American businessman with the words that he said. My friend Alex Magno noted in his column that Forbes’ comment is “not just a smear on a candidate he passionately supports, but a smear on a whole people, falling into the pit of bigotry.”
As a young reporter, I covered Dominguez at the agriculture department during the Cory years. He’s always struck me as a smart, level-headed guy who does not suffer fools gladly; Forbes crossed the line and Dominguez is simply not the kind of person to get into a public shouting match with anyone.
But I agree with Alex. This Forbes guy still has a lot to learn about not abusing the hospitality of his hosts in another country.
