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Dumb

FRONTLINE
Ninez Cacho-Olivares

09/12/2011

Noynoy really should think before he speaks, because whenever he doesn’t, he loses more and more public support. And he has to remember that as he stays longer in Malacañang, his popularity, already plummeting in just one year in the presidential office, is expected to plummet even more, as no president stays popular as his term nears its end.

Just recently, at an incoming Atenean president’s investiture, Noynoy likened the League of Filipino Students to the Marcos dictatorship, which statement, in turn got the LFS to call Noynoy “A man with no sense of history.”

As Noynoy reminisced on his college years in Ateneo, he recounted his apprehension in joining the LFS when it was being organized during the martial law.

He said that while everybody has his apprehensions, he had asked himself whether he should join it and be under the LFS executive committee where he said he and other groups would dictate to them, when there was already the Marcos dictatorship in existence.

“Are we to join an organization that will dictate to us?” he was quoted as saying, adding that he recalled the Ateneo student president, right after the voting, started to laugh out loud, because the entire Ateneo group voted unanimously to thumb down joining the LFS.

That was dumb of Noynoy to bring this particular subject up in an investiture of the Ateneo president, even if he was a batchmate or classmate, mainly because Noynoy should have remembered that while he is an Atenean, he is also the President, and whatever he says would be picked up by the media.

And quite frankly, what he stated was a great insult to the LFS as an organization, as well as to its members, because unlike Ateneans, the LFS and its members were, during the Marcos dictatorship, political activists, whereas Ateneans were certainly not during those days.

As the LFS said in reply to Noynoy disparaging of the organization: “Our members had been felled by the dictatorship’s bullets from our founding in 1977. And to be cheaply swiped by the son of Ninoy is nothing but the remark of a man with no sense of history.”

It is also appalling that Noynoy, even during his school days and even today, cannot seem to differentiate between a hierarchy of order in an organization, one moreover, that was deeply involved in fighting the Marcos dictatorship.

For Noynoy, he and his group from Ateneo saw an LFS executive committee as a dictatorship, which is weird, because in any organization, there has to be a hierarchy else there would be chaos in decision-making. Even businesses have boards and once a board decides on an issue, this becomes policy.

And Noynoy and his group saw this already as a dictatorship? Incredible how Noynoy’s convoluted mind works — especially when his vindictive nature forces him to connect everything to those whom he sees as his and his family’s political foes.

As LFS national chairman Terry Ridon said, Aquino’s statements were “silly” as he himself issued a memorandum order creating an Inter-Agency Executive Committee to monitor prisoners.

“Shall we liken such executive committee to the dictatorship as well? Obviously not,” Ridon said.

Ridon also reminded Aquino of the LFS’ participation in the many important events in the county, including protests against the Marcos dictatorship after the death of Ninoy, Noynoy’s father, and the overthrow of Marcos in Edsa, which is certainly more than what Noynoy and his family did, considering that they were much too far away and enjoying the American life.

Ridon ticked off the LFS’ achievements, saying: “We are as much a potent student movement as we were during the dictatorship. Last year, we had led the protests against your (Noynoy) government’s slashing of the education budget. We are doing the same thing again this year and the DBM (Department of Budget and Management) had already initially acceded to our demands to increase significantly the budget of our state schools.”

“As we stood firmly against the dictatorship, so are we not backing down until a significant budget for schools and social services is given by your government.”

All that could have been avoided if Noynoy thinks before he leaps. But he never does.

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