Insanity

The Manila Times

NEARLY three decades after his late mother of revered memory, President Cory Cojuangco Aquino, restored our imperfect democracy and was hailed as a global heroine for it, Benigno Simeon Cojuangco 3rd now unashamedly tells us that he is open to a second term as president.

Even if it is against the Constitution.

Even if the main motive for doing so, which he himself announced in a TV interview, is in effect to destroy our Republic’s constitutional order of separate and co-equal branches of government, each one serving to check and balance the other two.

Even if an evil and immoral goal underlies that motive: to make himself and his men guiltless of the crimes they have committed while in high office.

Goal is to weaken the Supreme Court
President Aquino himself declared in the TV5 interview that his goals in serving for a second term are to be able to continue his reforms, which can only be realized if the Supreme Court is weakened, its powers clipped.

He wishes to dismantle the present checks and balance principle that should have made him and Budget Secretary Abad desist from abusing their powers. For these abuses they will be held accountable by the courts even after the President’s term is over.

With an overwhelming majority in both house of Congress, he can have new laws passed that will repeal those laws that make all the abuses he and Secretary Abad have committed, especially in their inventing the unconstitutional Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) and in illegally using DAP money to benefit their allies and make whatever they desired happen.

Never has a Filipino president ever contemplated such an immoral and evil plan of action to escape liability for wrongdoings.

Right now the House has the drafts of the laws that would legalize the DAP. If passed, these laws would render the Supreme Court’s ruling on the DAP moot. Therefore President Aquino’s and Secretary Abad’s acts arising from it are no longer illegal.

There are also laws that would redefine what the word “savings” means. All the General Appropriations Acts that Congress has passed contain a definition of “savings” accepted by all beneficent parliaments all over the world. This definition was ignored by President Aquino and Secretary Abad when they invented the DAP and began to re-allocate funds (that had been appropriated by Congress for specific purposes) for projects and places they favored. The new laws re-defining “savings” would provide also that the new definitions would apply to the acts of reallocation made by President Aquino and Secretary Abad. Therefore, these acts that would have been punishable at least as acts of malversation would no longer be criminal.

Hearing a non-existent clamor
The justification for having the Constitution amended to allow the President to have a second term—is a lie. It is just one more of so many lies the President and his closest people have told since he assumed office in 2010.

Secretary Mar Roxas lied that the Filipino people were clamoring for President Aquino to extend his presidential tenure. The clamor was all in the defeated Liberal Party vice-presidential candidate’s head.

The Palace spokesmen then took Sec. Roxas’ fabrication—obviously the opening pages of the script—a step higher. They at first reminded audiences that President Aquino has always been averse to amending the Constitution. But, said they, he would of course heed the voice of his Boss, the Filipino people.

This was then followed by the President’s TV5 interview. In that interview he said that in response to his Boss’ clamor, he would be open to a second term and would do the necessary to make that possible.

All of these weird, obscene, immoral, vile, treasonous happenings in the highest levels of our Republic are so incredible they cannot be anything else but INSANITY.