To the very end, Noynoy Aquino was a man-child and boy-king rolled into one

I keep reading Yellowidiot tweets lamenting how the late Noynoy Aquino “died of a broken heart”. Thing is, for most mature and responsible adults, life is about the choices one makes. No justification for pity parties please. Noynoy made his bed and he laid on it. He had his psychological dysfunction which was evident because he was the only son and couldn’t measure up to his father.

Noynoy’s father Ninoy wasn’t what he was projected to be. He may have had an epiphany in detention but the fact that he plotted his own death so Cory can become President was insidious. He still wanted to get even with then President Ferdinand Marcos for the perception the latter robbed of him of what he thought was his destiny, the Philippine Presidency. Both Marcos and Ninoy had gravitas but the former had better intellectual abilities and was an outsider much the way President Rodrigo Duterte was in 2016 and is even to this day.

There are men who stand out among other men. Men who don’t think they control their destiny but it is really destiny that chooses them instead. In Noynoy’s case, he was given the opportunity to be a great leader but he still chose to serve a minority rather than the greater majority of the Filipino people. If it was even half true that the Opposition are the “silent majority,” as they claim to be, why haven’t they been able to win elections post-Aquino?

As President, Noynoy (known at the time as “PNoy”) couldn’t set aside getting even with his and his family’s political enemies. He was driven by hatred. He wasn’t man enough nor had the gravitas to look at the forest instead of the trees. The opposition at the time was more than willing to work with him. There was no impeachment and no destabilization plot during his administration.

By the midpoint of his administration the public was frustrated but he implemented measures to assure his chosen candidates victory in the midterm election. He jailed his political opponents thinking that he could ensure a Mar Roxas victory in 2016. But Duterte came in from left field after making a big mark on the radar of the national political scene. Lila Ramos Shahani relates how she asked his uncle, former President Fidel Ramos, to endorse PNoy in 2010 but Tabako refrained. When he saw through the continuity plan with Mar Roxas, Ramos made sure Duterte would run. Indeed, it is to Duterte’s credit that he didn’t become a Ramos puppet. That’s because it was never his nature to be one.

PNoy stands in contrast to all that. He had to rely on his inner circle even for the decision-making on the prognosis of his serious illness as Rene Almendras related during his eulogy. Aquino was a man-child and boy-king rolled into one. He couldn’t become his own man in his youth. He couldn’t become a real man even when he was President.

Ramon Ortoll

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