‘Noynoy now afflicted by a lameduck status?’

By NESTOR MATA
MALAYA

‘It’s just the fourth day after the national elections, and yet in kaffeeklatsches the talk is that Aquino is already a political lameduck.’

It’s only the fourth day after the mid-term national elections, and yet in Manila’s kaffeeklatsches the talk is that President Noynoy Aquino looks like a political lameduck. And someone was even heard asking, naughtily, “Does Noynoy have even the faintest idea what a constitutional and political lameduck is?”

Well, Aquino probably knows what that term means, and that’s the reason why he kept repeating his dreamy refrain for a “12-0” win for his Team P-Noy’s senatorial candidates during his pervasive personal campaign nationwide. Alas, his dream didn’t come true, along with his quixotic vision of winning a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Of those proclaimed as winners in the senatorial race, three are from the opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) led by the triumvirs Vice President Jojo Binay, former President, now elected city mayor of Manila, Joseph Ejercito Estrada, and Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, while nine came from President Aquino’s P-Noy Team, one from his Liberal Party and the others from other political parties, including a couple of political butterflies. And this simply means, as one analyst pointed out, that he won’t get an assurance that his legislative agenda would have easy sailing through the congressional mills.

Aquino, as other political observers and commenters noted in detail, wanted full control of Congress, particularly the Senate, to ensure passage of legislative measures to carry out his ambitious programs and projects, most especially those intended for the benefit of the poor, which he had failed to do during his first three years in office, but now hopes to bring about before the end of his six-year term in office in June 2016.

Not only this, Aquino also hopes for legislative ratification of his other dreamy notion of a new peace pact with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to end the long-running Muslim rebellion in Mindanao, and perhaps win, too, a Nobel Peace Prize, which could cover up the failures of his presidency, which has been pock-marked by problems of poverty, joblessness, corruption, inutility in governance, and, most especially, his despicable policy of political vendetta.

In the view of political observers, Noynoy Aquino will most likely spend his last three remaining years in power in trying to undo the first three years of malaise of his presidency. And this is not to mention his horrific mishandling of the Philippine claim to Sabah and the ever growing tensions with China, an emergent superpower, over territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Alas, starting June 30, President Aquino will then be afflicted by a political lameduck status!

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National Artist for Theater Daisy Hontiveros Avellana, who died at 96 last Mother’s Day, and her late husband Lamberto V. Avellana, National Artist for Film and Theater, left behind them a new generation of talented Avellanas, Cosios, and Hontiveroses in the world of arts and letters.

Among them are their son, Jose Mari H. Avellana, who was an award-winning actor and director for film and stage; daughter Ivi H. Cosio, an international awardee for painting, printmaking and sculpture; son-in-law Allan Cosio, an artist and sculptor, who was conferred the rank of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government; their grandchildren, daughters of Allan and Ivi, Danna Avellana Cosio-Mercado, a wordsmith, theater aficionado and social networker, and Ana Karina “Ina” Avellana-Cosio, holder of a degree of Master of Arts in Media Studies (Film) and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Comparative Literature, both from the University of the Philippines; and great-grandson Gio Avellana Cosio Mercado , 13, who loves to take photos and videos of his toys at play.

The Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), as well as still living National Artists, will pay tribute to Daisy Hontiveros Avellana as a National Artist for the Theater during State Necrological Rites at the Abelardo Main Hall of the CCP scheduled at 8:30 a.m. on Friday, before her remains are laid to rest in the Avellana-Hontiveros mausoleum at the Loyola Memorial Park in Marikina City.

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Quote of the Day: “Under a democracy, one political party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other political party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right!” — H. L. Mencken

Thought of the Day:”Let us give to our republic a fourth power the authority over the youth, the hearts of men, public spirit, habits, and morality. Let us establish this Areopagus to watch over the education of the children, to supervise national education, to purify whatever may be corrupt in the republic, to denounce ingratitude, coldness in the country’s service, egotism, sloth, idleness, and to pass judgment upon the first signs of corruption and pernicious example.” — Simon Bolivar.