Now he gives her failing marks for bad economics

By Raissa Robles

It was a brief incident lasting only minutes that somehow gave Senator
Benigno Aquino III that amazing power to bewitch a crowd, which he is
now harnessing to win the presidency.

Senator Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III during his first press conference at Club Filipino to announce he was considering a presidential run - Photo by Raissa Robles ©

The incident happened in the dead of night when President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo paid her last respects before the bier of President
Corazon Aquino, the woman who was once her role model until Mrs.
Aquino demanded she resign over leaked wiretapped tapes suggesting she
cheated in the 2004 polls.

Mrs. Aquino’s senator-son steeled himself to face Arroyo with polite
courtesy. The statesmanlike gesture impressed many since he had
earlier said he was not looking forward to such an encounter. But he
said she would be received politely since his parents taught them
well.

Unknown to the public, the meeting was also a rare encounter between a
former teacher and her student. “I was trained by GMA (as an
economist), she was my professor” in microeconomics at the Ateneo de
Manila University, Aquino said in an ambush interview.

“She gave me a B+,” he said smiling. “She was a brilliant teacher, she
communicated well…I think she taught us very sound fundamentals.”

“I never thought she’d turn out this way…her governance is primarily
for political survival,” he added.

Aquino has made no bones why he wants to replace his former teacher.
His presidential campaign website www.noynoy.ph states: “Tanggalin ang
tiwali. Itama ang mali.” (Remove the corrupt. Correct the wrong.)

He said his teacher had apparently forgotten her own lectures on the
importance of matching unlimited wants with limited resources.

Switching to lecture mode himself, Aquino said: “You take a project
like North Rail and contrast it to South Rail by the Koreans. Koreans
will build a 34 kilometer-narrow gauge railway system for US$50
million.”

“The first phase of North Rail is US$503 million for 32 kilometers
that will be made by China, (while the) 34 kilometers of South Rail
(is) US$50 million.”

“In China the wages are lower than they are in Korea; the equipment,
same thing; consultants, same thing. Why is it that the cost of the
Korean project is only 10% of North Rail?”

He then noted that “there is a comparable railway system in Australia,
not less than 1000 kilometers (in length), standard gauge (tracks),
double decker (coaches). Its rolling stock is faster” and the entire
thing cost a total of US$1 billion. “Ours is 32 kilometers at US$503
million dollars.”

“So, as an economist, where is the matching (of) the needs and the
wants? Where is the maximum utilization of resources” which Arroyo,
his former professor, used to drum into their heads as students.

He criticized the North Rail transport system that Arroyo was pushing
as an example of “less bang for the buck.”

If he becomes president, he said he would like the government to get to the bottom of the scandals that have long hounded President Arroyo:

• the fertilizer scam;
• the scuttled telecommunications deal between the government and ZTE Corporation of China;
• and of course the wiretapped tapes where a voice sounding very much like Arroyo asked election official Virgilio “Garci” Garcillano if she would win by a million votes in the 2004 polls. At one point, Garcillano recommended that a poll officer be kidnapped to prevent her from speaking out, and the voice that sounded like Arroyo said nothing against the suggestion.

“Those issues are unresolved and I want them resolved,” Aquino said.

As for those accusing him of engaging in the politics of vengeance, he
said he was just being consistent: “Hey, I was participant to so many
impeachments (filed in Congress against her) that never even got to
the stage of accepting the evidence.”

“We (the Liberal Party) supported impeachment moves but we were always
thwarted. We were trying to uncover some allegations.” He paid dearly
for publicly backing calls for Arroyo’s resignation over the Garci
scandal. Arroyo’s ruling party sacked him from the deputy speaker
post.

If his past action is any indication, his former economics professor
can expect to be given her day in court. When Aquino ran for the
Senate in 2007, among his rivals was Gregorio Honasan, a colonel whose
men nearly killed Aquino when they tried to take over Malacanang
Palace during a military coup attempt against his mother on August 28,
1987.

On the way to the palace, Honasan’s men fired at Aquino’s convoy.
Three of his bodyguards were killed and the fourth was wounded. Five
bullets hit Aquino and all but one was removed. Doctors told him it
was lodged too near the carotid artery and nerve bundle that controls
facial expressions. It was too risky to take out. He said it does not
affect his thinking or his health, but it has twinged at times in the
cold.

Despite what had happened, Aquino supported Honasan’s request for bail
in 2007 to enable the latter to campaign for his Senate re-election.
Honasan was then in detention over his alleged role as mastermind of
the 2003 coup attempt against Arroyo.

Aquino, whose boyhood dream was to become a soldier, said he wanted an
even fight with Honasan. “I was hit by bullets from Honasan’s men in
the neck and hips, but that’s past now. The principle of my father was
`respect the rights even of your enemies… genuine reconciliation is
democracy in action’.”

Both won, but Aquino had a three million vote edge over Honasan.

For Aquino, holding Arroyo accountable is part of his personal
advocacy to make democracy work. He said the “diminishing democratic
space that we’re experiencing now is reverting us back to an
authoritarian type of rule.” As president, he wants “to prove that
democracy works for everybody in the country, regardless of your
strata.”

“My advocacy is centered in making the institutions of democratic governance work so that it takes root and serves the interests of the many as against those of the few and powerful,” he posted on his website when he for senator in 2007. “In a working democracy the government exists to ensure the equitable distribution of opportunities and resources. Democracy will be the solid foundation on which economic progress would be based.”

The statements are an indictment of his brilliant professor whose
tenure as president has been marked with scandals involving the
alleged use of high connections to corner fat government contracts.

But Prof. Arroyo apparently judged Aquino to be just average. He never
joined her cabinet like her brilliant students did. He never made
waves as a lawmaker and, according to Ateneo-based political analyst
Benito Lim, Aquino would not have won as congressman and senator if
his mother, Corazon, had not campaigned for him.

Here lies the core of the criticisms against Sen. Aquino – he has not
accomplished enough to deserve the presidency and he is banking on the
emotional wellspring of goodwill and sympathy towards his dead
parents.

Almost 250,000 people went to his mother’s funeral. Shortly before she
was entombed, a number of Filipinos already started posting messages
on the social networking site Facebook that they felt orphaned by the
death and wanted the son to fill the void and continue his mother’s
fight for democracy by running for president.

The next day, “people brought yellow ribbons to Aquino’s house on
Times Street and a streamer – Noynoy for president,” Prof. Lim noted.
“It’s very clear they wanted to ride on the popularity of the mother,
the Cory magic.” Other politicians had started doing this, so “why not
the son?”

Even if the son looked and sounded anything but a politician – at 49,
he was slightly stooped and balding and looked professorial. His
speech announcing h would run for the presidency sounded like a priestly
homily.

During the brief interview, Aquino rejected the notion that he had
accomplished very little and he was not his own man. “I have
difficulty self promoting, self aggrandizing,” said the lawmaker who
served nine years in the House and two years in the Senate.

Of the nine Senate bills he has filed, two promote workers’ rights and four
try to curb the powers of the post which he aspires for. Much of his
time is taken up with holding Arroyo accountable for alleged
presidential misdeeds, which is part of a senator’s job under the Constitution.

One legacy his mother left which could prove to be a liability is the
clan’s continued control of vast landholdings in Hacienda Luisita.
Aquino said the matter was awaiting court resolution and he appeared
reluctant to talk about it.

Aquino has demonstrated he does not easily cut compromise deals. A
year ago, he voted (along with another presidential candidate Senator
Francis Escudero) against ratifying the Japan-Philippine Economic
Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) because he was holding out for “a better
negotiated and mutually beneficial treaty.”

Senator Mar Roxas, his vice-presidential running mate now, voted “yes” even if he said he believed it was lopsided. It was the best deal that could be cut, he said.

Last September 2009, Aquino as chair of the Senate committee on local
governments was supposed to sponsor a measure creating a new
congressional district in Camarines Sur tailor-made for President
Arroyo’s son, Congressman Diosdado Macapagal Arroyo.

Aquino refused to sponsor it, leaving administration Senator Joker Arroyo, who is unrelated to the president, to defend the measure. In a nearly empty Senate session hall, the young Aquino verbally sparred with Sen. Arroyo who had once defended his father, Senator Benigno Jr., before a military court.

Arroyo urged his former client’s son to pass the bill “then let the Supreme Court decide.” As if to assuage the younger man, Arroyo closed his end of the argument with a surprising show of support. He said, “Noynoy, good luck on your presidency.”

The following month after the bill became law, Aquino personally took the matter to the Supreme Court and asked the body to declare it unconstitutional. The matter remains pending.

Unlike President Arroyo’s eldest son Juan Miguel, who became a
politician on his mother’s first year in the presidential palace,
Aquino was a late-starter. He only ran for office at age 38 and when
his mother was six years out of power.

Although much has been written about Aquino’s famous parents, very
little is known about him and why he remains single to this day. Asked
why he wasn’t married, he narrated an incident in his youth when his
family visited his detained father who was in the military stockade.

He said he noticed a young male detainee also being visited by his
young wife. Then suddenly she stopped coming and they never saw her
again.

“It was as if she had said to her husband she couldn’t love him for
better or for worse.” He said it made him examine the life of his own
family – “our life was perhaps not easy and was not going to be easy.
That would make you pause and think, maybe this would also be part of
my fate.”

“Maybe God has not given (me a life partner) because there are still
many things he’s asking to be done, so that no one else will be
involved in the pain.” (This feature first appeared in Asian Dragon magazine,  which allowed me to post it on my blog.)