Why Philippine President Noynoy Aquino should resign

February 20, 2015

by benign0

 

The administration of President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III should end now. But it should end in accordance with the due process now upheld by the admittedly strong institutional frameworks the Philippines now enjoys. Within these institutionalised processes are mechanisms for removing a president that like President BS Aquino today, has evidently suffered a catastrophic loss of public confidence.

The key issue here is the on-going wellbeing of the country. Obviously, the Philippines is now locked in an untenable paralysis thanks to President BS Aquino’s glaring ineptitude in the fields of statesmanship and people relations. This is not a good time to be suffering a lame duck government, considering that there are Chinese warships delivering building materials to construction sites on Philippine territory, a succession crisis that leaves Filipinos with very little options around decent leaders to lead them after 2016, and a cornered and increasingly restless Islamic terrorist infestation in Mindanao. A landscape like this would severely challenge the best of presidents. An incompetent one like BS Aquino will simply implode — which seems to be what is happening now.

President BS Aquino seems to be headed towards a personal collapse that could bring the entire Executive Branch down with him. He is now completely isolated from the people he is supposed to lead, those he once regarded as his “bosses”. Despite spending what was reported to be 12 hours of expensive presidential time schmoozing with the grieving families of the 44 massacred Special Action Force police officers, he still failed to issue categorical statements about (1) his role in the chain of command involved in the tragedy, (2) approaches to hold the perpetrators accountable for their involvement, and (3) steps being taken by his office to expedite delivery of swift justice to the victims.

Instead of being on the right side of the argument from the perspective of the interests of the state, his government dithers on crucial debates that demand absolute positions to be taken by the Chief Executive. His top “peace” negotiators have issued embarrassing statements that show a bizarre bias towards the interests of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) whom they’ve evidently cozied up to over the years they’ve been in talks with. Some observers have raised the possibility that head negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer who continues to refer to these bandits as “brothers and sisters” may already be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors. It seems that beyond holding all of Mindanao hostage, the MILF have also all but captured Coronel-Ferrer’s sensibilities as well!

How much more abuse can Filipinos take from their demented government?

There is no reason to continue tolerating the leadership of an inutile president. Fear of an equally-detested Vice President taking over should not be an issue either. These are all just imaginary problems put into Filipinos’ heads by unscrupulous and opportunistic king-makers exploiting the now-chaotic political landscape.

The only sound argument provided by people who do not want the government of Philippine President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III to prematurely end is that a handful of “movements” to “oust” him lack credibility. I cannot really disagree with that argument seeing there are really just two key instigators in this circus — (1) commies and (2) agenda-driven shady characters. Commies who seek to remove the president using their classic tried-tested-and-failed “mass actions” are so last century (and so embarrassingly consistent in the use of their tired old slogans) simply can’t be trusted. As for calls for an ouster and establishment of some sort of “transition council” coming from circles backed by old-fartish disgruntled oligarchs, well, that’s just gonna be a repeat of the 1986 “revolution” that has now been reduced to a sad joke.

Quite a quaint sight to see people banding together into “movements” and alliances of convenience when, the fact is, said people really do not have anything in common in the way of shared philosophies. Then again, that’s pretty much Opposition 101 in Philippine politics.

The thing that ultimately makes such oust-[insert president’s name here] “movements” rather lame is that the arguments that underlie them are based on primitive tribal motivations rather than modern ethical principles. Commies, like their Islamic terrorist kin, for example, are, by nature, opposed to any government that applies ideas that fall outside of the scope of their little manifestos and bibles. And shady agenda-driven characters, for their part, are worse. For them, the issue is simply just personal.

The key to a more credible movement is to underlie it with sound principles that are scalable and timeless and not dogmatic (like those of the you-know-whos) in nature. This is the more modern more innovative and more intelligent way of undertaking an advocacy. Rather than attract a following by insulting Filipinos’ intelligence with tired hollow slogans, moronic demagoguery, ‘activist’ spectacles with a cast of clownish costumed characters, directives from creepy pastors and cult leaders, and has-been celebrities singing corny acoustic ballads, movements should be constituted around the same pillars of modern free socities — critical thinking, free inquiry, and continuous evolution.

[NB: Parts of this article were lifted from the Wikipedia.org article “Stocholm syndrome” in a manner compliant to the terms stipulated in the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License that governs usage of content made available in this site.]