Tiglao’s question deserves an answer

FOR SURE, not a few readers will again react with disgust to Rigoberto Tiglao’s Dec. 6 column, “Is Aquino breaking antismoking rules daily?” That may just be a tiny fragment of this columnist’s endless litany of tirades against the present government, some of which I also tend to take with a grain of salt. Even so, let us please get real at least for once on this particular issue. Doesn’t the question so simply emanate from plain common sense as to categorically deserve an equally commonsensical rejoinder?

I mean, given Memorandum Circular No. 17, series of 2009, which calls for a 100-percent smoke-free policy, practically a smoking prohibition that covers all premises, buildings and grounds inside the Palace—alas, I didn’t know even the toilets weren’t exempt!—it would, for heaven’s sake, be entirely futile to imagine where or how else President Aquino can or may yet be making a short or passing cigarette puff while discharging his daily duties. Methinks, with due respect, this is a matter that the presidential spokesperson—or “shock absorber,” if I may inevitably call him so—should be able to handle amply objectively in one of his daily encounters with the press.  Well, for the sheer sake of the freedom of information bill that is now being debated in Congress.

Or else, there may yet be nothing so grievously wrong with the President eventually saying, “mag-Presidente muna kayo!”  After all, this was a tact someone had tried in the past; it seems to me people have since ceased intruding into his presidential prerogatives.

—RUDY L. CORONEL,

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