Aquino doing a Marcos? Ludicrous, says Palace

The idea of President Aquino “doing a Marcos” is just “ludicrous,” said presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda in reaction to Vice President Jejomar Binay’s claim that he had warned the son of assassinated democracy icon, Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., against doing anything that could be perceived as dictatorial.

“It’s kind of ludicrous for Vice President Binay to compare President Aquino to Marcos. The families have suffered greatly under the Marcos regime, (their) father being a victim of martial law,” Lacierda told a Palace briefing on Wednesday.

“There is simply no comparison,” he said.

“This is obviously something that he [Binay] is fully aware of. Binay, at least in his better years, was a human rights lawyer and he fought against the Marcos regime. Now, I understand that there is a planned tandem with somebody related to Marcos,” Lacierda said.

There are rumors that the late dictator’s son, Senator Bongbong Marcos, might be Binay’s running mate in 2016.

Lacierda said Aquino has remained “firm and committed to the ideals of democracy, to the ideals of the 1987 Constitution.”

Binay said in a Radyo Inquirer interview on Tuesday that he had cautioned Aquino against forcing the impeachment of then Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona lest he become a dictator like Marcos.

The President, through his allies in Congress, successfully had Corona impeached in 2012 for failing to disclose some of his assets in his statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth.

Aquino had made public his displeasure over the midnight appointment of Corona by his predecessor, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Lacierda said he did not know if Binay “truly said that” to President Aquino.

Binay was a longtime political ally of the Aquinos until he left the administration last June, disappointed that he failed to get the endorsement of President Aquino as his candidate for president in 2016.

Since then, Binay has been the most vocal critic of the administration, calling it inept, slow and callous.

Lacierda also said Binay has been practicing the “politics of despair,” as evidenced by his scathing “True State of the Nation Address,” or Tsona, which he delivered last Monday.

Lacierda also said that the administration is addressing the problems raised by Binay in his Tsona such as the MRT problem.

“We are addressing all the concerns. You talk about MRT, we are going to do that. It’s a technical issue, it’s an engineering issue. We are going to fix that. The coaches are coming this August and by January you will see changes, improvements. We are doing a number of things. The rails have come,” he said.

Lacierda described Binay’s tirades as “politics of hate at its crudest.”

“Maybe we won’t be able to finish all in 2016 but our successor is going to finish whatever President Aquino has started, both the reforms and all the solutions that are being put in place right now,” he said.

The Binay camp described Lacierda’s response to Binay’s Tsona as “ridiculous.”

“What he should do is admit the truth. He does not have a rational reply to everything that Vice President Binay has said, because that was the true state of the nation,” said Binay’s spokesman Joey Salgado.