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Batas Mauricio

DID you notice the great difference between the treatment that the Aquino government gives its officials who are close allies of President Aquino and Aquino’s political enemies and not-so-close allies? It is clear, and no one can deny, that Aquino’s allies are spared investigation and prosecution even if their culpabilities are beyond question.

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On the  other hand, Aquino’s enemies are investigated, prosecuted, and then maligned to the hilt in media by the President himself and by his subordinates. This is double standard of the highest order, and a skewered sense of justice which exalts allies even whey are committing grave crimes, and mercilessly pounces on enemies even merely for imagined infractions.

Take the cases of senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla, who have been charged with plunder almost immediately after an extra-ordinarily brief preliminary investigation by the Office of the Ombudsman, and compare it with the case of Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya, who remains untouched up to this time. Shocking and nauseating, right?

Then, study the inability and, perhaps, even outright refusal, of Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales to obey a Supreme Court directive to investigate the proponents and authors of the discredited disbursement acceleration program (DAP).

Lest we have forgotten, DAP was used by President Aquino to corner hundreds of millions in public funds from agencies under the executive department, for distribution to congressmen and senators to firm up the ouster of Chief Justice Renato Corona. The tribunal said this must be investigated, and those responsible for wasting government money must be prosecuted and then jailed.

Surely, the Supreme Court had in mind, when it issued this directive to investigate, Morales’ office, because it is the only office that is empowered to probe government officials. I am also sure that the Supreme Court was thinking of Aquino and his budget secretary, Florencio Abad, as those to be investigated and prosecuted. Yet, Morales has not done anything, up to now. Why?

There could only be one reason behind this inaction or refusal to act on the part of Morales, who loves to call herself a “graftbuster.” And this is the fact that she would not want to investigate and then later on prosecute the very patron who plucked her out of retirement from the Supreme Court and installed her Ombudsman.

It is a case of “debt of gratitude” which, among us Filipinos, dictates that we should always show our gratitude to our benefactors even when these benefactors have committed grave and heinous crimes, which, in the case of DAP, was fully recognized by the highest court of the land no less as some sort of plunder, punishable with life imprisonment.

It is no wonder then that, with this kind of an Ombudsman, the Filipino nation can not really expect to see close allies being prosecuted sincerely, and sent to jail if warranted by the evidence. It would seem the only recourse our countrymen can have, at this point in our history, is to pray for divine intervention, a miracle, no less, so that true justice can finally be dispensed without fear or favor.

There is something scandalously anomalous in the famers’ barricade in North Cotabato which is now being derisively called as the Kidapawan Massacre: it would seem that the Aquino government had plenty of money that it could have used to buy rice for distribution to the hungry Mindanao farmers, but it refused to part with that money inexplicably!

The 2015 budget of the Aquino government–which was the budget in force when the Kidapawan Massacre happened on April 1, 2016–allocated some P88.8 billion for agriculture. Among the programs intended to be funded by that huge allocation was “providing credit for farmers and fisherfolk through the Agriculture Credit Policy Council” (see http://www.rappler.com/move-ph/issues/budget-watch/65227-aquino-2015-agriculture-budget).

The troubling question is, why did not the Aquino government find it in hits heart to use even just .0001 percent of that huge budget to buy the rice that the hungry farmers were asking to be given them? Was it because there is really no concern for the small and the marginalized among the government’s top officials, or was it because the budget is already totally spent at this point? Or, was there simply a failure of governance here?

What this shows is that, the Aquino government and its top officials are pseudo-Christians, or Christians who profess their faith merely through their lips but not in their hearts and in what they do on a day-to-day basis. With due respect, the officials of this government are certainly among those condemned by Jesus, our God and Savior, in Matthew 15:8, Mark 7:6 and in Isaiah 29:13.

Otherwise, if Aquino and his subalterns are really Christian believers–never mind what religion they may profess to have, if ever they have any religious affiliation at all–they could have imitated the example of Jesus who, being filled with compassion for the poor, proceeded to feed thousands with mere loaves of bread and tiny pieces of fish.

Aquino and his officials could not have missed these examples of Jesus, as they are expounded in church pulpits regularly. The biblical verses citing these examples are Matthew 14 and Luke 9. If anything at all, these verses are telling the faithful to help the poor, especially those who are hungry and who have nothing to eat.

The real tragedy in all these is the fact that hunger and other woes arising from waterless farms, dry and arid land, and extremely hot temperatures, are not unannounced and sudden occurrences. The Aquino government knew this situation is not unexpected, considering the many information swirling around about global warming and climate change wrecking havoc in the Philippines.

It is clear that President Aquino and his officials chose to do nothing, and in their  usual style of procrastination or blaming past governments for every trouble that erupts in the country, they failed to come up with programs that will not only address the increasingly hot weather but those that will assist our countrymen severely affected by the aberrant weather.

Aquino as usual remained contented with sloganeering. As was his won’t during the last six years that he has been in office, he has been engaged in what is now derisively referred to as “noynoying,” or the inaction of a person even in the face of the gravest problem, hoping that the problem would simply solve itself away. What a president, what a curse!

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com

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