VP Binay’s stay in Cabinet clouds ‘daang matuwid’

Why has President Aquino not fired Vice President Jejomar Binay from the many executive positions whose resources (taxpayer money) he has been squandering all these years for his 2016 presidential run under the pretext of “visiting housing projects” throughout the archipelago? Why is P-Noy keeping him in his Cabinet in the face of so many unanswered mega-corruption charges that have been leveled against him? Is his “daang matuwid” just empty sloganeering?

The answer lies in the fact that P-Noy’s sisters are rooting for Binay and quietly opposing any demand for P-Noy to cut off ties with a man who is now publicly perceived to be a scoundrel. In an article published in the Inquirer (“A ‘flighty’ Q&A with Kris: Why endorse Binay?” Front Page, 8/31/14), P-Noy’s youngest sister Kris said it all: “He was always there for us,” alluding to Binay’s “rambotito” show of support for their mother, Cory Aquino, during the several coup d’etat attempts against her presidency. Two of her sisters have since echoed the same sense of “utang na loob.” What arrant nonsense!

It’s not really the country’s good the Aquino sisters are concerned about; their support is based purely on personal thing. But, seriously, they’ve got it all screwed up. Binay was not “there” for their mother or for them; he was “there” for himself! He knew only too well that if Cory got kicked out of Malacañang, so would he from his own fiefdom in Makati, duh! But then again, scandal-prone Kris was never known to be any more tactful than a flake. Totally oblivious to the myriad charges of venality against the Binay family, as long as she continues to rake it in as a “celebrity,” she obviously couldn’t care less if all moral values got flushed down the toilet!

—GABRIELLE M. M. AGUILLERA, gamma54321@yahoo.com