Aquino better than Cory, Marcos, says Belmonte

A better President than his late mother Cory Aquino and the late tyrant Ferdinand Marcos.

That was the assessment of Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. of President Aquino days before the latter appears before a joint session of Congress on Monday to deliver his final State of the Nation Address (Sona).

“I think President Aquino has been our best President since recent times, [and that] includes Macoy (Marcos),” the Speaker said in an interview with the Inquirer.

Gains and advances

Belmonte credited Aquino for the gains and advances made by the country and its economy in the past five years in spite of wielding fewer powers than the dictator his late mother had unseated after the peaceful Edsa Revolution of 1986.

“Macoy [could] do anything he wanted, and yet look what happened to us,” Belmonte said.

“He exercised the very same powers that Lee Kuan Yew exercised in Singapore. He exercised the very same powers that maybe Park Chung Hee did in Korea, and maybe to a certain extent, this guy from Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir [Mohamad],” he said.

‘Very OK in many ways’

But in the case of Aquino, “within the constraints of the Constitution we worked on, I do think P-Noy is okay, in many ways very okay.”

The President, Belmonte said, is “both a strength and a weakness.”

“When he has a straight path (‘tuwid na daan’) laid out, it’s more difficult to get him to deviate from it, even for political reasons and anything like that,” the Speaker said, alluding to Aquino’s campaign for good governance.

Does it mean Aquino is inflexible?

Belmonte replied: “Not really. Nobody is really inflexible, but compared to the others who are super-flexible, that is the impression one gets from him. If we were comparing him with Presidents who were super-flexible, he will really appear inflexible.”

He said he appreciated the political will exercised by Aquino that allowed him to push the legislative agenda in the 15th and current 16th Congress.

“Many or some of the bills we have approved in the 15th and in the 16th Congress are bills that are well-recognized for their importance, but where the administration and the management of the House and the Senate just did not have the will to see them through, whereas we did,” he said.

Passage of important bills

Belmonte cited the passage of important bills under the Aquino administration that could not be passed in previous Congresses, including the sin tax law, the compensation for Martial Law victims and the reproductive health law.

In spite of powerful opposition to these bills, Congress, under the force of Aquino’s political will, was able to pass them into law, the Speaker said.

“We have had a lot of good laws. I think for the last several Congresses, the 15th and 16th have been among the most productive,” he said.