Memo to President Aquino III: Where there is smoke, there is fire

Don’t let family & allies undermine your mission, legacy

By Leandro D. Quintana

In a recent column my long time friend and ex-Arroyo confidante Jess Dureza reported, with a tinge of pleasant surprise, that on a recent road trip thru central Mindanao he run into a buzz saw of road construction and other major building activity.

He was seemingly impressed enough to ask the people in charge as to why so much road building etc was taking place in a part of the country that was erstwhile noted more for government neglect rather than attention.

The reply he got seemed almost unbelievable. He was told, in so many words, that contractors had now gotten full budgets to acquire quality material and supplies, keep real (as opposed to “ghost”) employees on the job, and get the required equipment to do the work because now they no longer had to pay public works officials bribes and kickbacks.

Wow, who would have thought that we would ever hear those words spoken. Yet,

Dureza’s discovery proved to be no fluke. In a Philippine Star article just a few days ago, President Aquino III had reportedly visited the Department of Public Works to attend a ceremony of some sort and openly commended the management and staff for the great work they were doing (i.e. get their jobs done without graft). So impressed was he in fact that he announced bonuses for employees to the tune of ten thousand pesos each. Dishing out the “stick and carrot” approach is a good way to go, for sure.

Finally, some concrete evidence that, at last, the fight against corruption could be won after all. All that was needed was a leader truly committed to the battle.

Time to break out the champagne and celebrate, right? Well, not so fast. We’ll have to put the bubbly on ice for now. A reader had sent me a copy of Charlie V. Manalo’s news item in the Daily Tribune indicating that presidential sister Ballsy Aquino-Cruz and her husband Eldon are reportedly in the midst of a brewing “bribe & kickback” scandal involving the acquisition of rail car equipment from Czech firm Inekon and that the amount involved is between two to twenty million dollars.

The Palace was quick to respond, dismissing the report as “murky” and “obscure” and that President Aquino III would not “dignify” it with a reply.

That is probably adequate and it is commendable that the good president expresses and demonstrates complete confidence in the integrity of his sister, her husband and his close advisers and confidantes. Yet he must stop right there and ponder the situation with more introspection and just a bit of skepticism. Why? Well, past, as they say, is prologue. And there is a past that hits very close to home for this president.

Remember his mother Cory’s regime? She was a woman of unquestioned honesty and integrity. Yet her legacy has been soiled and muddied because, as she was preaching honesty and integrity in public service, her close friends and relatives were allegedly busy at the trough gobbling millions in graft , kickbacks and all kinds of chicanery . They engaged in the very same activity that the Marcos gang made a profession of.

Cory, having failed, by default perhaps, in her mission, merely served to reinforce the Filipino people’s resigned acceptance that “all politicians are crooks”. So instead of creating a chain of honest and graft free governments, ingredients absolutely needed if the country were to make progress, Cory Aquino’s failed tenure resulted in her loss of the moral high ground and in effect merely helped to set up the ascendance of the Estradas and the Macapagal-Arroyos. Another decade or more of shameless plunder!

President Benigno Aquino III must take his mother’s lessons to heart and learn from them. It is not enough to be personally untinged of corruption. Those closest to him must likewise be “pure”. Julius Caesar, in divorcing his second wife Pompeia, declared that, as an extension of him, she too must be above all suspicion. And thus must it be with our youthful president.

He cannot dismiss as frivolous the claims against his sister and others close to him. He must take concrete steps to see to it that if wrongdoing had taken place that they face the consequences. He must lead the effort to unveil the shroud of mystery and concealment under which they hide and if indeed they are innocent of the charges now being aired in the media, he must make proof available publicly. Unfortunately, given the history of corruption and malfeasance by previous presidents, Mr. Aquino III, unfairly for sure, must take the attitude that they are “guilty until proven innocent.”

A high and unreasonable bar indeed but he knew when he sought and won the office that the challenges were many and temptations even more numerous.

He must truly embrace his mission. And begin to accept the reality that if he is to succeed in his sacred quest for a clean and honest government, he may indeed have to live, both metaphorically and literally, in loneliness and isolation. His true and only friend and kin must be the millions of Filipinos who have for so long suffered the betrayal of their leaders and look to him to finally reverse their fortunes. If he has true friends among his inner circle they too must take the Aquino III mission to heart. It is certainly a sublime and worthy one. Candor and contrition (if warranted) , more than aplomb, must be the mantra of the moment.

(Ldq44@aol.com)