Do we want Binay?

IF there is one thing I learned in politics, it’s that part of the necessary tools for winning an election is the character assassination of the opponent. All the political parties, from local to national, have demolition teams whose main job is just to carry out such assassination. And one can always measure the desperation through the extent of how far the demolition team assassinates the image of the rival opponent.

At one end there are some good about the practice. It is only on this practice where important issues surfaces for politicians to face. The public gets informed about the not so nice background of a candidate that may be an indicator if one has the moral ascendancy to hold a public office. It can also roughly help people size up if the intentions of the candidate are pure and sincere or it is clouded with vested interest. At the end of it, any information, be it good or bad, so long as it is true and valid, helps the voters make a wiser decision.

But there are also instances, where the demolition team are so desperate to fabricate unfounded stories and accounts that discredit the credibility of a rival candidate. In these cases, they cloud public opinion and distort the truths of the matter. Most of them are so good at fabricating stories that even intelligent voters get deceived. This becomes the beginning of the filthy journey of a politician to power. And if they get successful on this first step, they continue to conduct themselves thinking that they can get away with anything.

As with the case of the Binay Dynasty, the character assassination was obviously carried out with great success as the most coveted presidentiable loses popularity. Surveys dwindle as issues on corruption surfaces one after another. The only question now is – are all these allegations true or are all these but a part of political propaganda?

Let us enumerate the allegations:
1. Overpriced construction of Makati City Hall Building II and Makati Science High School building.
2. Expensive cakes of ordinary ingredients made by a well renowned chef (Nancy Binay?) to be given to senior citizens of the city on their birthdays.
3. Rigging of bids for the city’s projects to favor contractors who are friends of the Binay family.
4. Buying real estate properties left and right reportedly using taxpayer money.
5. Forcing condominium developers to give the Binay the family a unit or the whole floor, to get a building permit.
6. Hundreds of millions of pesos deposited in different banks in his family’s name or those of his cronies.

These are but a handful of the so many allegations against the Binay dynasty. Obviously these are still allegations and in the eyes of the law, one is innocent until proven guilty.

Yet it is also noteworthy to stress that evidence were presented to prove all six allegations in the senate blue ribbon hearing and the Binay side debatably failed to disprove them. And of course, there is that suspension of Mayor Binay in Makati by the Ombudsman that shows that there is indeed enough prima facie case to merit an investigation of these allegations.

I don’t know about you, but for me, it is enough to ask whether there is any better candidate that can lead the country in the next six years.