EVERY day gives us reason to believe that the much-vaunted Daang Matuwid is a hollow slogan foisted on us by a family that thinks it has the monopoly of righteousness.
This week, for instance, President Benigno Aquino III defended his sister who was photographed using the presidential helicopter to campaign for the Liberal Party’s candidate, Manuel Roxas II, in Dalaguete, Cebu.
Mr. Aquino said his sister, a show business personality, was one of the country’s biggest taxpayers anyway so she has as much a right to board the official helicopter as the other businessmen whom he handpicks to ride with him.
On board the official helicopter, the President reportedly showed his sister “the result of meaningful democracy that our parents had fought for.”
The defense is just bizarre, if it can be called a defense at all. Mr. Aquino does not seem to realize the hypocrisy of using the aircraft bearing the presidential seal in campaigning for a candidate he says will continue the righteous reforms he had initiated.
A president can certainly take anybody he pleases on these taxpayer-funded rides, but in the matter of elections, some discretion is in order. And now the sister who once promised she would stay away from the cameras is all over media crying foul over the beating she has been getting on social media. Poor thing.
Also last week, during the commencement exercises at Manuel L. Quezon University, the President declared he was openly campaigning for Roxas and his running mate, Rep. Leni Robredo, despite election rules and the general disdain for “guests of honor” who use the precious minutes given them to boost their candidates’ stock.
Why, then, should other government employees hold their tongues despite prohibition on them when their own chief executive wantonly violates this rule in his desperation to get his bets elected?
Of course, the President can invent some excuse for doing what he did and turn the situation around so that it would look as though he were the victim of villains. The same sister has made a fortune out of playing various victims’ roles—whether she was convincing is not for us to say.
In real life, though, the Aquino family has mastered the art of creating the illusion that they are underdogs and do-gooders being targeted by evil forces.
Thankfully, the mask is peeling, the show is about to end, and we now see them for what they are.