Presidential Spokesperson Abigail Valte continues to fail to answer a very simple question that her boss President Benigno Simeon “BS” Aquino III has faced since the beginning of his term — What’s next with Hacienda Luisita?
Of course it comes as a convenient feature of the most recent fielding of this question that the asker is none other than former Philippine Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona…
Corona was at the Department of Justice on Thursday to subscribe to his counter-affidavit to the P120.5-million tax evasion case filed by the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
He said the tax case is still part of the government’s persecution against him.
“Six months after the decision of the Corona court had become final in connection with the Hacienda Luisita, I am wondering why until now the lands are not yet distributed to the pitiful farmers, not even a single piece,†he added.
During his impeachment trial, Corona claimed the decision was one of the reasons Malacanang wants him out of office. Luisita has long been in the hands of Aquino’s relatives.
Valte goes the easy route and sidesteps the question by merely laughing it off, and responding off-tangently: “It would be better if he answer first the tax evasion raps against him,†Valte says. Unfortunately for the Second Aquino Administration, the question of what seems to be emerging as the singular mission of President BS Aquino’s presidency (securing Hacienda Luisita from its subjection to agrarian reform) will not go away by simply laughing it off. In the first half of his term, BS Aquino has seized control of just about every institution that he perceives may stand in the way of his mission — railroading trumped-up impeachment charges versus Corona through the House of Representatives, turning the Senate into a kangaroo court, installing a lame duck and allegedly mentally-unstable lackey in the Supreme Court, and marshalling the awesome media resources at his cronies’ disposal to turn the Philippines into a nation of impressionable starstruck ignoramuses.
| SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIAL COMMENTARY! Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter. Opt into a paid subscription and you'll get premium insider briefs and insights from us. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Learn more |
[Photo courtesy Zimbio.]
With control that extends across the three branches of government, big-time commercial media, and the eyeballs and ear drums of every chicharon-chomping Pinoy, BS Aquino to be fair has achieved big time. Big time, at least, in the eyes of Uncle Peping who, just a short while ago, was likely among a number of “elders” of the Cojangco clan fuming over the failure of their Malacañang investment to manage the safety of their family jewels in the early days…
[The Daily Tribune reported an inside source that revealed] that the plot to oust Corona was hatched at the Bahay Matanda, the ancestral house of the Cojuangcos after elderly members of the Cojuangco clan reportedy [sic] berated President Aquino for attacking members of the High Court which they believe was the reason the SC justices revoked the stock distribution option and ordered the distribution of the [Hacienda Luisita] sugar estate to its tenants.
“From the time of (President Ramon) Magsasay, the hacienda land was never lost. When Martial Law came, we still did not lose our land. GMA (Gloria Arroyo) and Cory had a fight during GMA’s presidency, we Cojuangcos still did not lose our land. Now that that you (Noynoy) are president, we lose the hacienda!â€, the Tribune source quoted an elderly Cojuangco as he berated Aquino in the vernacular.
“You are the reason for our loss of the hacienda, because even the Supreme Court you had to fight with!,†the elderly Cojuangco was further quoted as telling the President.
In a society whose collective credibility and brand equity is already severely hobbled by a chronic shortage of class, President BS Aquino lays waste to any remaining trace of class in the Philippines by continuing to rant and gloat about the plight of Corona and his other archrival former President Gloria Arroyo. The latter has recently been the subject of the vicious and tasteless humour of the President. In his recent official visit to New Zealand, BS Aquino cracked a joke in apparent reference to Arroyo saying that “Corrupt people in the Philippines have such flashy, expensive, and fast cars. But when they want to escape, they use wheelchairs.”
The blanket assumption Aquino and his mouthpieces continues to use in these unimaginative pronouncements is the so-last-decade presumption (and rallying cry of the then Patalsikin Na Now Na “opposition”) that the alleged corruption and thievery of Arroyo is de facto a given. Never mind that there are on-going proceedings following due process that are being followed to establish this properly.
The tired old basis of BS Aquino’s laban (“fight”) is that “everybody knows that Arroyo was a corrupt president.” But popular sentiment has a poor track record of carrying the most valid of ideas. The venerable Andy Grove, iconic former leader of tech powerhouse Intel Corporation wrote in 2005 about his experience with popular sentiment…
The best advice I ever got was from Alois Xavier Schmidt, my favorite professor at the City College of New York. A saying of his stayed with me and continued to influence me as the decades unfolded. He often said, “When everybody knows that something is so, it means that nobody knows nothin’.”
Our little research group at Fairchild [Semiconductor] some 40 years ago started to study the characteristics of surface layers that were the heart of modern integrated circuits. At that time, “everybody knew” that surface states, an artifice of quantum mechanics, would interfere with us building such chips. As it turns out, nobody knew nothin’: We never found any surface states; what we found was trace contamination. When we identified and removed this, the road opened up to the chip industry as we know it today.
Mediocre minds take comfort in being in line with popular sentiement. Brilliant minds, on the other hand, begin to worry when too many people agree with them too often.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Dapat dyan sa corona na yan ipakulong na ng habang buhay. Butata ka na humihirit ka pa. Ano ang connection ng hindi mo pagbayad ng tax sa HL? Ang ibig mung sabihin nakatago ang kalokohan mo. Ipakita mo na lang na tama ang binayaran nyang buwis.
Ang sarap mangiba mg usapan, bord. Just accept the fact that they just want stay away from the issue.
IKAW ang may maraming kalokohan because the fact remains that Corona was impeached is because the process is wrong, in addition on securing the HL.
I would love to see the poser named dapitan in jail due to his libelous comments. Being vindictive and stupid is amazing, right?
Kawawang dapitan, palaging napapahiya kaya nangiiba ng usapan. Nauubusan ka na ba ng propaganda??? Kakaawa ka talagang gunggong.
hacienda luisita is on a hold/delay strategy until after 2013 elections, then expect legal excuses for overturning.
even the uneducated yellow cult might ask questions then but then again maybe not. sheep to the slaughter
@obvious malacanang troll
“Dapat dyan sa corona na yan ipakulong na ng habang buhay”
Sus, ayan ka nanaman sa hate propaganda mong bulok. Hindi pa napapatunayang guilty, ipapakulong mo na agad. Anung klaseng pagiisip yan?
“Butata ka na humihirit ka pa.”
IKAW ang BUTATA, total bobo ka rin naman.
“Ano ang connection ng hindi mo pagbayad ng tax sa HL? ”
Corona was impeached because your stupid boss is desperate to protect HL.
“Ang ibig mung sabihin nakatago ang kalokohan mo. Ipakita mo na lang na tama ang binayaran nyang buwis.”
Yet another libelous statement. You really should watch what you say it WILL come back to bite you in the nuts(not that you have any).
Yan lang ang kaya mong gawin? recycle ka lang ng recycle, palagi ka namang napapahiya.
Money from Arroyo
Former Pampanga Gov.
Eddie Panlilio revealed
that he was given a
paper bag containing
P500, Thousand in a
Malacañang meeting in October 2007. The
money was allegedly
for community projects.
The bags were handed
out by a female
Malacañang staff. Panlilio said he accepted
the money because
because no conditions
were attached; he did
not consider it a bribe.
Various versions of the source of the money
came out as other local
officials present in the
meeting admitted
receiving either P500,
THOUSAND or P200, THOUSAND
@tangent, pwede link nalang ang ilagay mo next time? we can always click the link and read it from there. anyways, lahat ng nasa posts mo, they are old news. kakasawa na nga. andaming allegations pero walang verdict until now.
Puro allegations lang kasi ang alam niyang ipost dito. Talagang walang kwentang tao talaga yang dapitan/tangent na yan.
Kahit ilang beses ka pa magbago ng pangalan, halatang halata ka parin dapitan. Kahit ilang beses mo pang ipost yang bulok mong propaganda, wala paring kwenta yan.
@ Tangent
Taxpayers money that Arroyo gave away to cronies and other beneficiaries of her corrupt administration. Gloria Arroyo never had money. As the sole breadwinner in the Arroyo household struggling as a professor at the Ateneo, in 9 years as president she became a billionaire. I think she deserves where she is now because she has chosen jailtime than give up the money she stole.
@ Tangent, I think a concerned taxpayer like you who felt betrayed by the greed of GMA and her boss Mike Arroyo should be congratulated for speaking up.
Let’s say what you said is fact. Then GMA should be in a legal sense fish in a barrell for her tunnel visioned hunter Noynoy. What does that say about Noynoy that so far everything has been teflon to GMA? I thought she was this super criminal. Noynoy was a nobody in the real world and as a president is exposed as a fraud to anybody smart enough to see through lame spin doctors and press. Another thing you said, any troll who emulates Noynoy should be applauded. By you.
@ Gogs
I’m not sure if your response was addressed to me, but this is one fact Gloria Arroyo can not deny that without Cory Aquino who appointed her Undersecretary of Trade which started her career in politics, she would still be languishing on her paycheck-to-paycheck teaching job at Ateneo to this day.
The Macapagals were broke and politically dead. Gloria was married to a useless lawyer who never had a career in the first place, so without the political nurturing of Cory, Gloria would never have made it in politics without the Aquinos and their people. But Cory was wrong, because the person she had helped from total obscurity would turn out to be the biggest persona-non-grata the Aquinos have ever known.
@Gogs…..as you know,I do not support any politicians,NONE! A crook is a crook.
So I have no agenda here,but a crook is a crook is a crook.It is that simple.
Anyone ever involved in illegal activities, from low-level street drug dealing to super high profile politicians and everything and everyone in between, knows that the you NEVER hand someone MONEY,NEVER! You can not be accused of giving someone anything (OR taking anything) if you do not hand it to them(OR take it from them).I do not need to mention(DO I?) that in the same scenario(s),NEVER deposit money in someones bank account with your name on it.Unless you are in Switzerland and have bank secrecy laws like the Philippines. Ever wonder why a lot of politicians have foreign currency bank accounts,and there is no freedom of information act on the books? Now that the dollar is crashing hard,it can be converted to Yuan quite easily and invisibly too!! The law says foreign currency,not U.S. currency…it is not a co-incidence!
TROLL. 😛
Just accept the fact that you’re just EMO over GMA claiming she stole millions of YOUR money (when its the governments money to begin with. Taxation money ain’t yours son! You aren’t down with that? Complain about taxation without representation!) when she also was an efficient leader that kept the Philippines economy afloat, invested on its economic side and did what she could to keep the government from going astray as she wasn’t going to get any legitimacy as the transitional leader after Estrada. So in this system, she had to what she can to gain allies, even if it meant throwing money at them.
I kept repeating this is because you should be the one who should wake up. Your comments are a reflection of a GIRLY MAN and whine about putting away one corrupt politician and not realizing the full lengths of the corruption. But what do I expect from a ignorant pinoy pleb like you to know?
Kawanishi-Noseguchi, Kinunobebashi, Takiyama, Uguisunomori, Tsuzumigataki, Tada, Hirano, Ichinotorii, Uneno, Yamashita, Sasabe, Kofudai, Tokiwadai, Myokenguchi.
PCSO funds for admin
candidates’ campaign
In October 2001,
Roberto Rivero, former
consultant of the
Philippine Charity
Sweepstakes (PCSO),
claimed that the first gentleman LOLONG
ARROYO used almost $5
million of PCSO funds to
finance the campaign of
some senatorial
candidates and to bribe radio commentators.
Source from the record or it’s just hearsay, idiot poser. 😛
no source = no credibility
What a pathetic excuse for a troll
Yeaaahhh…what Tangent just did is what we call spamming, right?
@Tangent
If I were you… I would start counting the accusations you made without the benefit of documentary evidence, witnesses or solid proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The TRO is still in effect. But just in case it expires what will you do? That translates to a lot of counts of libel. Your IPS has been duly noted.
Looks like somebody’s looking to make an extra buck for today’s propaganda quota, huh? But copy-pasting is such a lazy way to do it. come on, troll harder!
Propaganda nalang ang bumubuhay sa BS Aquino administration. Lahat na ng tsismis tungkol sa dating administrasyon, inilista na nila sakaling maka-chamba…lol!
He will not pay one single peso,not one!!
A commentary on BS Aquino’s Akbayan Socialist Partylist from the Manila Standard.
http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/2012/10/29/unmasking-akbayan/
Wasn’t there an alternative plan way back in 1998 or so to instead distribute Hacienda Luisita through a stock-ownership deal? I always thought that would be better for CARP, since it would prevent eventual land-grabbing.
very obvious naman, Penoy don’t want to discuss about HL kasi alam nila wala silang habol unless magkaroon sila ng matibay na ground para baliktarin yung decision ng SC…and naniniwala ako sa tribune about what happened at the bahay matanda, dahil hindi man lang umalma ang mga cojuanco sa report na yon dahil ayaw nilang pagpiyestahan ng media ang naging source ng Tribune at baka magkaidea pa yung mga idiot na followers ng mga dilawan… 🙂
Kung pinag-uusapan pa ang H/L, then people will keep looking. Looking at the amount on the check paid by GobyernoPilipinas to H/L stockholders, baka times-eight o times-twelve…. Kailangan si Heidi, nagbabantay?
Read this to believe it! BS Aquino made the headlines and is now abusing his powers by way of his PSG. From the Daily Tribune:
http://www.tribune.net.ph/index.php/headlines/item/6281-noynoy‘s-psg-moves-to-arrest-lawyer-driver
Benign0
I think PNoy’s “continued ranting against GMA†may also be traceable to the flurry of dismissals and reversals of the various plunder and other case PNoy in his witch-hunt hastily filed against GMA:
— plunder charges over the Iloilo airport project
http://rp1.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/02/28/12/arroyo-plunder-case-dismissed
— plunder charges lowered to graft over the cancelled NBN-ZTE project
— plunder and graft charges over the OWWA funds
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=862919&publicationSubCategoryId=63
A grim reminder — “Time Waits for No One†(40’s song): The President serves only for a single 6-year term. And this means that PNoy has until June 30, 2016 — or a little over three years from today — to satisfy fully his lust to incarcerate both GMA and Corona together to vindicate his anger for their Hacienda initiative.
NOTE: Link to the first part of an exhaustive 5-part historical series on the Hacienda at http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/181877/news/specialreports/hacienda-luisita-s-past-haunts-noynoy-s-future
By fixing the term of office of the Executive, the Constitution has thus seen to it that PNoy will step down at the end of his six-year term; hence, allow me to remind PNoy once again of the oft-quoted caveat concerning the precedent that PNoy has laid down for his successor to emulate:
“An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.†– Thomas Paine (1794)
Heidi should be on full-alert kapag nag-babayaran na for H/L. Kung napipirmahan ni Noynoy ang bill na may naka-singit biglang-bigla, baka ma-pirmahan ang cheque na na-dagdagdan ng “comma” at tatlong zero.
Sino ang a-angal kung bilyones ang pagkakamali, si Tiglao?