Vice President starts opposition road show
Politics dictated the Aquino administration’s allocation of resources, and Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, the presumptive administration presidential candidate, has been the beneficiary of this practice, according to Vice President Jejomar Binay.
After quitting the Aquino Cabinet and declaring himself leader of the opposition, Binay has taken his antiadministration act on the road, criticizing the government for making more people poor and not doing enough to help them.
Binay’s visit on Friday to Navotas City, hometown of his erstwhile spokesperson and close ally Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco, was his first public event since attacking the Aquino administration during his speech at the Coconut Palace on Wednesday.
Throughout his Navotas visit, Binay was repeatedly introduced as the country’s next President.
In turn, he told the residents that when he becomes President, Tiangco will be the House Speaker.
Going around Navotas, Binay was at his best “noncampaigning” mode, directing his antiadministration attacks at Roxas, his potential rival for the presidency.
He claimed that funds that should have gone to the housing agencies he headed were instead funneled into Roxas’ Department of the Interior and Local Government, which he said did not even have the mandate to build houses.
“This is what’s happening in the government today. Politics dictates who would be given the bigger budget, especially their own candidates,” he told reporters.
No joke
He also faulted Roxas for saying that he found Binay’s critique of the country’s problems “laughable.”
“I want to tell him, Mr. Roxas, that for the Filipino masses, there is nothing funny in their everyday hardship of riding the defective trains of the MRT. And there is especially nothing to laugh about the fact that despite having the biggest growth, many of our countrymen continue to be mired in poverty and go hungry,” he said.
“This is a serious matter, Mr. Roxas. This is not a joke,” he added.
But Binay also thanked President Aquino for giving him the chance to serve for five years in the Cabinet, where he headed the government’s housing agencies and was a presidential adviser on overseas Filipino workers’ concerns to boot.
The problems he saw
He, however, disputed Mr. Aquino’s claim that he never spoke up about the problems he saw in his five years in the Cabinet.
Binay said he discussed the Zamboanga siege and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) with Mr. Aquino himself.
He also recalled that during the siege of Zamboanga by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in 2013, he worked to secure a ceasefire, although the fighting continued.
His DAP stand
When the DAP issue came to light, he said he took the stand that it was unconstitutional. When the Supreme Court struck it down, he said the ruling should be followed.
“But the administration still fought for it,” Binay said. It has since come to light that DAP funds were used for projects that did not help the poor, he said.
He also alleged that even if the DAP was no more, it was still around but given a different name. He did not elaborate.
He also wondered why Budget Secretary Florencio Abad has not yet been charged for his role in the DAP, the program that Abad conceived to pool supposed savings in a fund that the President and his budget secretary said was used to pump-prime the economy.
Binay also disputed Abad’s statement that he had been a beneficiary of the DAP. He said it was the National Housing Authority (NHA) that received funds from the DAP, he said, adding that the NHA was an agency under the Office of the President.
He also said his contention that the internal revenue allotment for local government had not been released was based on a Commission on Audit report.
‘Thank you, Mr. President’
Binay said he stayed in the Cabinet for five years because he wanted to help the poor. But he said there was a limit to what he could tolerate, and noted that after five years, poverty remains widespread.
He concluded by echoing the President’s own statement the other day. “Thank you as well, Mr. President, for what you said,” he said.
Reacting to Binay’s Wednesday resignation speech in which the Vice President openly criticized the administration, Mr. Aquino said he had done no wrong and was repaid with criticism.
“So, I say to him, ‘Thank you,’” the President said last Thursday.
With suffering poor
Binay started the visit with a “boodle fight” at a wet market, followed by a meeting with Navotas fisherfolk concerned about their loss of livelihood, and with senior citizens who became the recipients of wheelchairs.
With the fisherfolk who aired their concerns about the new amended Fisheries Code that could stop ordinary fisherfolk from fishing on Manila Bay, Binay took potshots at the administration even as he promised to address their concerns.
He noted that the fisherfolk were not even consulted about the measure, and their concerns about it were not heard.
“You were not included in the process. That is the government. The poor are being made poorer. If you had been rich, this would not have been done to you,” he said.
More people are becoming poor and the poor are being made to suffer more, he said.
Binay said he could endure the attacks against his family, but he could not tolerate the actions that make the poor suffer more.
He noted that the country’s economic growth has been hailed, but many people do not feel it.
He said there were other actions the government could do aside from making things hard for ordinary fisherfolk by going after those who use cyanide and dynamite to fish.
The government should find the balance between protecting the environment and helping the poor, said Binay.
‘When I become Prez…’
Binay vowed to join the residents if they should decide that they had no other recourse for their grievances but to march.
He said he would address the issue once he becomes President.
