President Noynoy Aquino’s crooked path justified @JaimeGarch

Posted onAuthorbenign027 Comments

On his request, I read Jaime Garchitorena’s End of Year Thoughts. The primary payload of Mr Garch’s piece seems to revolve around the notion that to expect any sort of strategic thinking and strategic execution from President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III is an exercise in utter futility, and therefore, that expectation is best written off for the remaining four and a half years of Noynoy’s term. Indeed, we don’t really need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. As Mr Garch himself observes, even the dim mind of the president did so…

[…] IMHO, even the President knows that to expect all this from him ( strategic or sinister) is ridiculous. I just don’t think he’s capable of that type of thinking or that much thought. I mean that was never his apparent skill set. It’s certainly not what got him elected into office.

I can’t say I disagree with the above observation. Despite the role of Chief Executive that Noynoy currently holds, Filipinos know better than to expect the calibre of performance one would normally expect of a man in such a position from a guy like Noynoy.

Indeed, I agree 100% with Mr Garch…

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(a) Filipinos certainly did not vote for Noynoy because he is a brilliant politician.

(b) They did not vote for him because he is the most charismatic of the lot.

but…

(c) They voted for him because he “represented hope for change”.

The above all pretty much constitute an established fact. Noynoy has so far proven to be a lusterless politician and too dull to be considered truly inspiring. But he embodies the Filipino “hope”.

See, Filipinos are a “hopeful” lot. But the trouble with this Pinoy-style hope is that it does not stand up too well to the simple question:

Hope in what exactly?

To be fair to Mr Garch, he attempts to answer the above question. And he starts from the premise that Filipinos want “change”. And presumably by simple virtue of the fact that Noynoy is president, “change is what we’re getting”.

I read the latter half of Garch’s piece with an open mind and found that some key concepts he’s articulated quite lucidly:

(1) Our ingrained embrace of “democracy” is at odds with the shiny engineered efficiency and expeditiousness offered by an authoritarian state like Singapore and the state of our nation almost provides evidence to support a re-evaluation of this stubborn embrace.

(2) Given that an “over-intellectualised” upholding of democratic ideals by its “care takers” (Mr Garch cites two groups of them) over “the last 25 years” failed to deliver any real results, “[t]he President is justified in breaking the standards [i.e. ‘subvert’ certain ‘legalities’] that these two [‘care taker’] groups would like to uphold”.

(3) Evidence that the popular will is behind the President can be inferred from the overwhelming evidence of assent from Congress (“working within the theory of representation”) and a “lack of any strong protests by the public”.

Mr Garch asserts that President Noynoy’s actions enjoy the mandate of the Filipino people to bend democratic rules on the principle that too much democracy and/or flawed application of democratic systems in the Philippines simply did not work over the last 25 years; but that the President’s approach is subject to the following conditions:

– That his intentions are not compromised by an “agenda outside of the welfare of the people”;

– That his actions are “transparent”; and,

– That the Opposition is “given the opportunity to challenge those decisions whether in court or in congress.”

I think this is one of the closer things to a sensible justification of the actions we have so far seen coming out of Malacañang (though I doubt if Noynoy had actually engineered his administration around such a framework on the onset). Like St Thomas Aquinas does with the convolution that is Catholic dogma, the above comes across as an after-the-fact backward-engineering from the interesting situation Noynoy and his team already find themselves in after bumbling their way through much of 2011. But I dare say the framework goes a bit of a significant way to answer my now famous “Hope in what exactly?” challenge in the context of the current regime of Noynoy.

My big IF, however, is a big one, and it comes in a three-component package. The above framework Mr Garch laid out can be executed IF the person who is leading its execution within it is (1) a brilliant politician, (2) an inspiring statesman, and (3) an overall smart guy. Noynoy, unfortunately, is none of the above. Perhaps Noynoy’s administration passes the latter two of the above three conditions (transparency and opportunity to dissent) that Mr Garch stipulates. Unfortunately there is a single elephantine showstopper that compromises the first (no agendas, please) one — Hacienda Luisita.

Too bad. Kapalaran nga naman talaga ng Pinoy.

But nonetheless hats off to the structure you put to the daan Noynoy is paving for us, Mr Garch. Unfortunately, it is a good framework being tested by an incompetent President. Then again, the framework has been used many times before in previous presidencies. What president after all has not circumvented or subverted the Law to get “noble” things done? There is a daan alright, but it is not matuwid and Noynoy is, by your admission, taking it. If Noynoy wants credibility among the minority of Filipinos who think and therefore do not buy any of his campaign platitudes, he should stop pretending to be anything else but the traditional politician that he is as he is simply carrying on a long tradition of justifying the crooked path he is taking in practice in order to justify his “noble” cause.

27 Replies to “President Noynoy Aquino’s crooked path justified @JaimeGarch”

    2. @vincenzo:

      basahin mo muna. halatang mas bobo ka pa kay pnoy tuloy eh. ka-iq mo yung mikrobyo sa pagitan ng daliri sa paa ng tricycle boy. (si pnoy naman ka-iq yung paa ng tricycle boy.)

      (vincenzo’s new year’s resolution: “m222 poh aq mgbsa @ mgspilling”)

      Reply

    3. Tits or it doesn’t existed. You’re just a lazy bastard who only cares for your “great” leader no matter what the criticisms are and makes desperate lies.

      Reply

    5. VincenBOZO Bobo Arellano… bumili ka ng 32 inches na monitor… kahit sekon hand… CONTROL SCROLL UP para mas lalong lumaki ang text… THEN READ SLOWLY WITH COMPREHENSION. tapos… ihampas mo na lang sa ulo mo yung monitor kung di mo naintindihan… HEHEHEHE… pani ka du yu nhow dat?

      Reply

    7. HERE ARE THE SUGGESTED NEW YEARS RESOLUTION TO PNOY.
      1.QUIT THE BAD HABIT OF BLAME GAME ATTITUDE.
      2.QUIT THE BAD HABIT OF BAD MOUTHING ATTITUDE AGAINST HIS POLITICAL OPPONENT.
      3.QUIT THE BAD HABIT OF PROTECTING HIS KKK AND CORRUPT BUDDIES.
      4.QUIT THE BAD HABITS OF PARTYING WHILE HIS CONSTITUENTS ARE SUFFERING FROM CALAMITIES.
      5.QUIT THE BAD HABIT OF PREEMPTING THE CONCERNED DEPARTMENT TO GIVE FAVORABLE JUDGEMENT TO HIM.
      6.QUIT THE BAD HABIT OF SMOKING.
      7.QUIT THE BAD HABIT OF PLAYING PSP.
      8.QUIT THE BAD HABIT OF TARDINESS.
      9.AND THE MOST IMPORTANT IS QUIT THE BAD HABIT OF ALWAYS”LYING” TO THE PEOPLE.
      IF ANYBODY WANTS TO ADD SOME MORE,PLEASE FREE TO DO SO ACCORDING TO YOUR KNOWLEDGE.HEHEHE…..

      Reply

      1. If you read all the pages (all 22 of them), you’ll realize that this guy is elaborately trolling the whole pex community. I wonder if that guy had something else to do aside from logging on and off of his different accounts and answering his own.

        Kinda creepy, this die-hard yellow fan.

        Reply

    9. Si abNoy lang ang presidente na ginagamit ang ngalan ng demokrasya para sirain mismo yun ating demokrasya—abnoy talaga.

      Mahusay si Garch. Maaga pa lang, nabisto na nya kaagad mga kalokohan at panloloko nila abNoy sa taumbayan.

      Pilit na inililihim nila abNoy ang kanilang pakay para (at kaugnayan) sa Hacienda Luisita. Takot silang mag-anak na mamulubi lalo na’t sanay sila sa maramyang pamumuhay.

      I would never be convinced of his promise to fight corruption unless abNoy demonstrates that he would distribute (for real) the Hacienda land to farmers to whom it clearly belongs.

      Reply

  2. A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his
    father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive
    him to despair.
    Niccolo Machiavelli

    hacienda luisita, baby

    Reply

    1. i can’t see the point of Gatchitorena’s “CHANGE” thingy. After the long blahblahs before the last two or three paragraphs he’s started defining the two sets of people who are “resisting change”. putangnang yan… WALANG DIRECTION so paano magbabago ang mundo at magiging makulay? wala namang direksyong sinasabi si Abnoy kundi DAANG MATUWID pero bakubaku naman… for one fnking year and a shitty six month period… NOTHING HAS CHANGED for the betterment of the ordinary indio below the poverty line… gutom pa rin, walang damit at walang tirahan. pud kloting at shelter… IBIGAY NI ABNOY YAN at liligaya ang mundo ni Pedro, ni Maria at ni Bantay.

      BTW, Benigs… have you read the “new year’s” message of Abnoy? nakaka PWE!!!

      Reply

      1. Re Noynoy’s New Year’s message, no I haven’t. Kakatamad.

        Mr Garch’s piece actually contradicts Noynoy’s “daang matuwid” campaign slogan since he proposes that the more effective path is actually a less-than-straight one.

        Reply

  3. We don’t need a brilliant President, to lead us…all we need is a responsible and sincere President. What did Noynoy Aquino showed to us, in his his term as President?…Irresponsibility, self importance, insensitivity, etc…He grew up a rich spoiled child. And , he is behaving this way. The buying of Porsche car…his subservience to the Oligarchs…his tendency to protect his Hacienda Luisita…the buying of Congress and the corruption of Congressmen…his behaviour, during the Luneta Hostage Crissis…and again, his behaviour in the recent flood tragedy…He cannot lead…and he does not care…there are people behind him, pulling the strings…

    Reply

    1. Lol! A seminal classic about a great mayor of Chicago indeed, right here! 🙂

      Here’s the key excerpt…

      Once in a while a loud minority or some crusading investigative journalists will rail about some payoffs or other assorted irregularities in the way Little Dick’s machine does business, and Daley handles it just the way he was taught: if he can’t shut them up, some disposable functionary or embarrassing Alderman will be hung out to dry, and the controversy goes away.

      And what is the result of all this? The city is cleaner and safer. The infamous public housing projects of Cabrini Green and the Robert Taylor Homes, two suburbs of Hell Itself, are long gone, their residents largely integrated into the community. Little Dick was voted the Best Mayor of America’s five largest cities by Time magazine in 2005, and Chicago is in the running to host the Olympic Games in 2016. The completely dysfunctional mockery of democracy that is the political system in Chicago found, in Father and Son, a way to work for most everyone’s benefit.

      Reply

      1. So you see, the approach to government, this being similar to what Mr. Garchitorena is espousing, is not necessarily bad. If he had happened to read my article before he wrote his, however, he would have noted some fundamental differences that contraindicate someone “not capable of that type of thinking or that much thought” being at all appropriate for the position.

        So for his benefit and everyone else’s, I’ll explain all that in an article later.

        Reply

        1. Cool! Look forward to reading it. I did a piece on the concept of “benevolent” dictatorship a while back too here, and it also boiled down to the quality of the leader him/herself as there will never be a truly full-proof system and therefore no such thing as a purely rules-based approach to governance…

          In effect, we can, on one end, be comfortable sacrificing individual liberties in exchange for expeditiousness and decisiveness in governance if and only if we can trust leaders to act purely in the interests of the greater community. At the other end of the continuum we can be willing to shoulder the relative costs and complex bureacracy of an ultra-representative “democracy” (such as the Philippines’) when we absolutely cannot expect our leaders to act beyond their selfish interests.

          Successful democracies are somewhere in the middle of this equation. They have reasonably trustworthy leaders and reasonably bureacratic governance.

          Benevolent Dictatorship, therefore, is not a matter of advocacy as is often brought to question whenever we praise the virtues of, say, Lee(Kuan Yew)ism or Mahathirism. It is merely but one state (for that matter it is an extreme state) in the continuum of the inversely proportional relationship between benevolence and degree of democracy that I described in the preceding paragraph.

          And here is the punchline of that piece:

          If we manage to find among our lot of 80 million souls a truly benevolent dictator, then there is no point in being a democratic country.

          Which makes Noynoy a scary phenomenon because he is perceived to be “good”.

    1. Wow your pic is not bad at all. It looks exactly like the real thing. And yes I think this country feels like north korea thanks to those delusional, ignorant flips who got infected by the media virus and keeps whining nonsense about how powerful their “great” leader is. Btw happy new year guys!

      Reply

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