Abort Mission

Life doesn’t run out of surprises. I was actually watching for what would happen next – whether she’s going to fail and all the President’s men (including the President himself) would be pointing blaming fingers on her, or she’d succeed and those same men would be gritting their teeth and twisting truth to save their faces. But the President beat me to my speculations. Don’t we have a referee around to tell those in power that he’s already out of propriety? It seems that the President just played his Vice-President for a fool. Actually, in the process, he did not just played her, he played the government and the whole Filipino people for fools. Should appointments to government positions be based on a sudden spike of emotion? Just because a person hears rumors down at the corner store, should he go out in the streets and challenge his neighbor to a contest of who could do a task better, spitting and spewing distrust and accusations along the way? Wait a minute, doesn’t that sort of scene happen among drunkards in underdeveloped slum areas? Is the President staging a glorified version of drunken dramatics drenched in dreadful drudgery? What was that? A drunken fit before a hangover? Then the post drunken stupor with recovered reason, then swinging back again to the former state, all in quick turnovers.

Join me in portioning the proceedings. The President meekly apologized for making accusations against the Vice-President regarding the alleged invitation of a foreign prosecutor. This in itself is revolting enough. In that apology, the President confesses that he made comments based on judgements that he made from watching a singular video. Are we so deeply third world that our head of state can’t afford people to do intelligence for him, that the best source of information is the television? Or have we really thrown research and reason out the window? Don’t we review some ten related pieces of literature and some five related studies in the recent five years to provide basis for a study? Don’t we get quotations from three stores for our canvas forms? Doesn’t the Scriptures call for two or three witnesses to establish truth? But you have to appreciate the humility in the apology. However, all that crumbled when in less than 48 hours (or was it 24 hours?), that meekness turns to madness when the Head of State finally loses his grip apparently and kicks Madam Leni out of the position he appointed her on, just some three weeks ago. What gives?

Wait, I can’t move on from the apology just yet. Since the President just exposed that he makes his raunchy remarks based on unreliable samples, how much of the comments that he has made in the past had had similar faulty foundations? It is merely the act of giving in to gossip heard from the tambays at the sari-sari store. Only difference is that it’s marked with the official seal of the President of the Republic. At least, when that sort of thing happens around the barangay, residents have the punong barangay to go to. The problem is, when the highest official of the land does that, we wouldn’t have a barangay hall to go and file a complaint at.

Still in review of the recent events, all this drama started when the President challenged the Vice-President to take charge of the nation’s illegal drugs campaign (in supposition that she could not possibly do better than the President, since he had many failures, how much more could the VP do?) So, we have to clearly acknowledge that the grand purpose of the appointment was to prove to the Vice-President, the Filipino people and the international community that despite her strong opinions, Vice-President Robredo could not possibly accomplish anything in the anti-drugs campaign. It is the presupposition of the Duterte camp that since the President was not able to do it, no one else could. So, you couldn’t have blamed Congressman Lagman when he has been honking his horn against acceptance of the appointment, seemingly yelling that it’s all a trap. But one has to admire the saintly good nature of the Vice-President who has been unmindful of the obvious ill intentions, meaning to maximize the opportunity and seeking to save at least one life from dropping due to drugs.

Now, join me still in some little analysis. It would imply that the termination of appointment as co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs is an abortion of a mission. What was the mission? The mission was to prove to everyone that Vice-President Robredo could not do any good if she were to handle the anti-drug campaign herself. A mission would only be aborted if the commander perceives with certainty that the plan will not succeed, or some element has come that would jeopardize the whole mission. They withdrew the implementation of the plan because they have seen with certainty that the appointment would not prove Robredo’s ineptitude, but rather prove otherwise. So, logically, Vice-President Robredo would have been an effective anti-drug czar. The Filipino people just lost that chance for the sake of some people’s pride.

“The LORD Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and lofty, for all that is exalted (and they will be humbled),” Isaiah 2:12