Wednesday, October 17, 2007 Carvajal: A sorry spectacle, a sorry lot By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
WHAT a pathetic figure Rep. Antonio Cuenco cuts these days. At his age, coming from an old respected political family, he should be sitting on his laurels.
But there he is regretting having said the truth about President Arroyo’s cash gift and swallowing whatever self pride he has in pretending it was all a big joke.
He is, in fact, the big joke if he thinks he can make people believe his retraction. Instead of aging graciously, he continues to look down on us, his gullible (at least that’s what he thinks) countrymen, succeeding only in making a pathetic fool of himself.
Malacañang’s denial is no less condescending and no less pathetic. Secretary Cerge Remonde insists it was not the President herself that handed out the cash. Does he imply that makes it cool? No wonder the government does not look for the mastermind of all the extra-judicial killings. It must think, as Secretary Remonde seems to, that if the mastermind did not do it himself then, chill out, there is no crime.
Presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye does not seem to make an effort to deny that cash changed hands but justifies its acceptance citing the late Jaime Cardinal Sin who said he would accept a donation from the devil if it is to help the poor or something to that effect. We’re not yet saying PGMA is a devil of a donor but the recipients’ denial and the giving in the shadows would indicate there is no good purpose for which she or her proxy gave the money.
The opposition, on the other hand, in the person of Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, is not helping the people’s cause when he condemns the cash-giving for political, and therefore wrong, reasons. While Malacañang did not have in mind the common good in giving the cash, neither does the opposition in condemning it.
The cash-giving by the President was wrong because the whole thing lacked transparency. If it was an honest act, meant to help the nation, then it should have been done openly. The country should have been told where the money came from, how much was involved, to whom it was given, for what purpose and what was the criteria for the selection of the recipients.
Since it was all done surreptitiously, Secretaries Remonde and Bunye have no right to tell us to leave the President in peace. Besides, what does Malacañang care? It is a sorry spectacle because it believes it can make people believe what it wants the people to believe.
Worse still, they in Malacañang and in the opposition are a sorry lot because they have convinced themselves they can fool all the people all the time. If so, then they could be making the misjudgment of the millennium. All the people somehow just cannot be fooled all the time. They are not now and they bear watching.
