Binay sets bad example for PH’s future leaders

How will we teach our young the values that our forefathers passed on to us? How will we set a good example of what the true essence of valuing one’s word and promise is? Can we show a better example for them to see? If you, like me, can’t find the right answers to these questions, then are we ready to accept the snuffing out of Rizal’s hope for his beloved “Filipinas”?

Palabra de honor. A daunting word. According to www.vocabulary.com, it is a verbal commitment by one person to another agreeing to do (or not to do) something in the future.

It is a Spanish term which means “word of honor”; in Filipino, “May isang salita.”

On Vice President Jejomar Binay’s alleged graft and corruption, as an ordinary citizen who has to overcome the daily hurdles of life with barely enough resources, with a husband that needs to go to a foreign land to provide for our family’s basic needs, with kids studying and hoping for a better education, with a family continually battered by the increasing prices of basic commodities, I think Binay should have faced the people.

It was Binay who asked for a debate with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV. The media took the initiative to organize the debate, not because they wanted a confrontation live on TV but because they saw an opportunity, especially for the Vice President, to finally answer and clarify the issues raised against him, issues which he had been avoiding for so long to confront directly.

Has the Vice President become so isolated from the public he is not able to discern

Trillanes’ call for truth? He is being given the opportunity to explain his side. He can call this political oppression, persecution or whatever, but the people are waiting for him to clarify the issues confronting him, not to run away from them. Is this how he wants to be remembered in history?

Mr. Vice President, the people don’t need your avowals that you came from a poor family; they don’t need your “Kay Binay gaganda ang buhay” jingle, but this has been shown to be true as far as your family is concerned, seemingly at the expense of the people who want and deserve an explanation directly from you.

The people deserve to know the truth. Yes, you are now on public trial and it is unfair. But then if truth is on your side, why are you so afraid?

Do you want to be remembered as someone who doesn’t value his word of honor, someone who, instead of facing the problem, ignores it despite widespread public clamor for you to talk about it in public, someone who chooses to be misjudged rather than to be understood?

I have no political affiliation, I am a nobody. I am just tired of hearing, seeing and reading news every day how our trusted and elected officials gravely abuse the power that we, the sovereign Filipino people, have vested in them so they can lead us and our nation to a better future. But they have left us instead in poverty, shattered and helpless. We still hope they will somehow see us suffering from their hands and change for the better.

—KARLA CRISOSTOMO,

Metro Manila