A diversion to keep public eye from failures
Several media outlets came up with a headline trumpeting that President Aquino’s controversial sister Kris was last year’s top taxpayer. Clearly, with an Aquino-controlled media, this news report comes as a deodorizer for this administration’s problems in tax collection, smuggling and corruption. Half-way through his administration, President Aquino finds himself unable to keep his campaign promise of eradicating corruption, especially in the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs; he is oblivious to the fact that his own trusted officials are the very source of the problem.
With the news that Kris was 2011’s top individual income taxpayer, they have started cleansing her recently (once again) tarnished reputation and they have created a diversion to keep the Aquino administration’s failures in revenue collection from prying public scrutiny.
—GILBERT ASTUDILLO,
