Binay’s invincibility no guarantee for victory, it’s all myth

IF VICE President Jejomar Binay is a shoo-in in the coming 2016 presidential election, how come there are no takers of his offer to be his running mate?

It is clear that Binay is running on empty as he feels his ambition slowly but surely slipping through his fingers.

Binay consistently ignored the invitation of the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee to answer questions about his alleged ill-gotten wealth. He has labeled the investigation as a charade and a political gimmick of his enemies out to hijack his presidential ambition. Even as mountains of evidence and testimonies of credible witnesses mount, he refuses to meet the accusations head-on.

After the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) report on the 242 bank accounts belonging to Binay and his dummies, I think the more all his denials and cavalier attitude regarding his ill-gotten wealth became less tenable. The AMLC does not play politics. Binay should man up and explain to the people how he has become so rich with only the salaries of a government official.

But instead of making a disclosure of what’s inside his closet, he chooses to bury his head in the sand. The Department of Justice and the Ombudsman should be relentless in pursuing the ends of justice in behalf of the millions of poor Filipinos who deserve better than the likes of Binay.

Though Binay said that the acting mayor of Makati, Romulo Peña, has no authority to make that decision, the latter’s abolition of the sister-city program that Binay, while Makati mayor, instituted, is a step on the right path. An audit of the program by the Commission on Audit may yet open a can of worms and reveal that it is in fact “the mother of all scams” not so much by the amount of Binay’s “commission” as by the number of local executives who will be “incinerated” as a result of the audit.

In spite of all the troubles now battering Binay, he and his attack dogs still believe that his masa will carry him to victory in the 2016 presidential election. Not too fast, my friends! Don’t forget that FPJ’s masa is still around. So is Erap’s, who has already distanced himself from Binay. And then there is also the masa of Nora Aunor, the resurgent superstar who promised to campaign for Poe. Binay is literally twisting in the wind, becoming more desperate, so desperate in fact that he has replaced with his signature letter “B” the image of the crucified Christ on the crosses attached to the “bracelets” (kuno)—some say they were rosaries—that his camp distributed to the relatives of those who perished in the sinking of motor boat Kim Nirvana in Ormoc. A cheap shot, indeed!

Here is good reminder for Binay from the late US President Abraham Lincoln: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

—CARLOS D. ISLES, carlos_isles@yahoo.com