Binay’s debate withdrawal exercise of prudence

I respectfully beg to differ from the seemingly overwhelming opinion of the public that Vice President Jejomar Binay had shown monumental cowardice in suddenly withdrawing from his scheduled public debate with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, which the former had himself initiated. For me, participating or defaulting from a so-called “debate” which, truth to tell is not, displays not so much one’s personal bravery or cowardice as good discretion founded on sheer logic.

That debate is not a debate in the real sense of the word for the simple reason that the organizer (KBP or Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas) had put up only a moderator, not a panel of judges, to pronounce the winner and loser, or possibly a draw. Let me just paraphrase a remark we often hear when one changes his mind and apologizes for an error: Binay had merely been wiser today than he was yesterday. Is there anything wrong or to be ashamed of with that?

In a recent letter, I had sort of posited that a verbal squabble was bound to end up as a no-win situation for Trillanes (“Public debate with Binay, a ‘no-win situation’ for Trillanes,” Opinion, 11/12/14). Despite Binay’s withdrawal, I still maintain that position. That is, if we were to accept—which, methinks, every deep-thinking observer of the ongoing Senate investigation must accept—that the senator’s idea of “winning” in this controversy has all the while been to succeed at all costs in continuing to malign the Vice President until 2016. As things are, it is becoming as downright incontestable as water is wet that Trillanes’ strategy has been to make his allegations of Binay’s corrupt acts and practices as shocking as possible to media and the public, whose tendency, quite unfortunately and more often than not, has been to outright swallow them hook, line and sinker.

Alas, indeed as shocking, as saying, for example, that Binay owns a 350-hectare farm and an air-conditioned piggery in Batangas. I can see that maybe—well, but just maybe—the figure 350 had been conveniently and purposely quoted with an ulterior motive—to tinker the public’s imagination into recalling a popular quotation that says, “Numbers do not lie!” The thing is, the number being mentioned and apparently accepted in the hearing as the truer one has now become even less than 150 hectares, in turn reminding people of a counterquotation that says, “Sometimes, liars use numbers!” And so I ask, can there be anything as highly ironic as these contradictions? On the contrary, it is a pity, highly amusing and unthinkable that some people believe that there can indeed exist an air-conditioned house for pigs in our midst and times—well, at least up until a media trip to the much ballyhooed

hacienda proved otherwise.

Before some readers get me wrong, this letter is meant neither to defend Binay nor to criticize Trillanes. To be honest, I myself refuse to believe that Binay is hiding no skeletons in the closet, or that Trillanes’ accusations are totally baseless.

—RUDY L. CORONEL,

rudycoronel2004@gmail.com