Aquino picks a fight

It was, as both Malacañang and the TV networks made sure to mention, the first time President Aquino preempted prime-time television to deliver a national address. When he went on the air, for about 12 minutes, on Wednesday night, he was thus doing something new. That he used the time to repeat something he had already said before explains the speech’s immediate reception.

As many journalists complained through social media in real time, the President’s address was old news, a waste of time. That would have been true if his intended audience had been the reporters and anchors and analysts who necessarily populate the public square. But any discussion of the shortcomings of the President’s speech—and there are two in particular we wish to highlight—must proceed from an understanding of what he set out to do, rather than from what we wanted him to say. And understanding begins with the question of audience.

Though the feistiest passages of the speech were phrased as a direct challenge to the “corrupt officials” (“mga tiwaling opisyal,” in the original) who were implicated in the pork barrel scam, the form of the speech itself was standard us-versus-them. Here was the explainer in chief at a time of confusion (“baka po mayroon na sa ating nahihilo”—there may be some among us who are disoriented), offering clarity on the issue of the pork barrel and the Disbursement Acceleration Program. Clarity begins with knowing who is “us” and who is “them.” There was the right side: “Sa isang panig, kayo at ang gobyernong binigyan ninyo ng mandato para sa pagbabago” (On one side, you and the government you gave the mandate for change). And then there was the other side, the corrupt officials out to sow confusion.

Perhaps the most memorable part of the speech was the passage where the President made the clearest distinction between the two sides. To those who sought to portray that politicians were all the same, he said: “Ang tugon ko po diyan: Hindi tayo pareho. Hindi kami nagnakaw, at hindi kami magnanakaw.” For some reason, the official English translation dilutes the President’s use of the plural form into the singular: “My response: We are not the same. I have never stolen. I am not a thief.” We think people will remember the passage precisely because the President was speaking on behalf of many; a better translation would read: “My response to that: We did not steal, and we are not thieves.”

The purpose of the speech, then, seems clear. It was to further deepen the divide between the very many Filipinos who are tired of corruption (as reflected in street protests and in the September surveys of both Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia) and the corrupt—and to reinforce the President’s anticorruption bona fides. In other words, he was courting public support.

Why? Or to ask a question asked countless times after his speech: Why only now, when he could have demanded airtime anytime he wanted? It seems clear from his speech that he is committed to two parallel tasks. First, he is going to prosecute the pork barrel cases as far as they would lead. The challenge to the “corrupt officials” was an unveiled threat to do everything legally possible; why else would he publicly burn his bridges with popular politicians who had been allies, perhaps not close but functional, only a few months ago? There is no going back on the plunder charges, and he needs the public’s support for that. As we have written in this space more than once before, first things first, and that means pursue justice in the pork barrel scam.

Second, Mr. Aquino is going to defend the DAP to the very last. His defense is based on an emphatic assertion that the DAP is not part of the pork barrel. On this point he has willingly accepted the parameters as laid out by constitutionalists like Fr. Joaquin Bernas: The battle over the DAP is one of constitutionality, not criminality.

This brings us to the speech’s main shortcomings. In his zeal to paint an us-versus-them scenario, the President made short shrift of those who have criticized his stance on pork and the DAP but are not beholden to the “corrupt officials” he challenged in his speech. But surely there are those who think differently from him but have the country’s interests at heart, too? And he also missed the opportunity to explain why 9 percent of two years’ worth of DAP funds still went through legislators’ endorsements. On that point the public is still confused.