Marred Roxas

COINCIDING WITH the anointment of Mar Roxas by the BS as his choice for a successor came abs-cbnnews.com’s 10 things to know about him: husband to the network’s Korina Sanchez, Wharton School alumnus, grandson of President Manuel Roxas, 4^th richest in the BS Cabinet, trade secretary to Erap and GMA, the BS’ secretary of transportation and later interior and local government, investment banker, third highest vote-getter in Philippine electoral history with his over 19 million votes in the 2004 senatorial derby…that from fading memory now.

Vice President Jojo Binay’s reaction to Roxas’ anointment was a sinister sneer: “If you recall, I beat him in 2010.”

Of Anointment Friday, Binay said: “Today is the start of the serious examination of each candidate. What kind of experience do they have? What have they shown in terms of capability?”

I am no Binay supporter. I will not, definitely, vote for him. But I have my own take on Roxas that will not, as certainly, make me vote for him either.
No, it’s not just about his incompetence at the DOTC which birthed the MRT troubles. Neither is it all about his disastrous mishandling of the Yolanda aftermath – remember his infamous tirade to Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez: “You are a Romualdez, the President is an Aquino”? – grounding the rehabilitation efforts on partisan, if not dynastic, politics.

My beef – for lack of a better word – on Roxas hews closely home. As articulated here on November 12, 2012 yet under the head Roxas the Absurd.

NATTERING NABOBS of negativism.

Alliteration crafted by the legendary columnist of the New York Times Bill Safire (On Language) for a speech by US Vice President Spiro Agnew hitting the liberal press. (Agnew preceded his president, Richard Nixon, in being driven out of office, but that’s another story.)

Anyways – especially for my seminary elder Ronnie Tiotuico, tourism director,   who complains of being always driven to Messrs Webster and Roget by my columns – nattering means chattering; nabob is originally a term for governor in India under the Mogul Empire but has evolved to also mean any person of wealth and prominence; and negativism is habitual attitude of skepticism.

Nattering nabob of negativism.

Fittingly suiting Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas for his seemingly obsessive compulsion – or should it be compulsive obsession? – to stomp on Pampanga at every jig he takes.

Blinder than a bat on anything good about Pampanga. Eyed as a fly on the minutest bad. Roxas is.

Where others – the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the US Agency for International Development included, the mogul Manny V. Pangilinan too – see the Clark International Airport as best option for the country’s premier international gateway, Roxas saw the least possibility, short-sightedly looking only at the long distance between Metro Manila and Clark, and the prohibitive cost of building a railway system to span it.

There, totally blinded to the fact that distance is best measured not in miles but in travel time. A case in point: It takes 45 minutes to motor from Balintawak, Quezon City to Clark spanning over 70 kilometers. It takes some two hours by car from Balintawak to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport only some 20 kilometers away.

As then head of the Department of Transportation and Communications, Roxas was all bullish about the development of other airports in the country, some serviced only by missionary flights. And, all bullshit about Clark, over which he sat as chairman of the board of Clark International Airport Corp. Come now, give but one good thing that went Clark airport’s way during the incumbency of Roxas at CIAC!

Effete corps of impudent snobs.

Another one from Agnew, appropriated and appended to Roxas, singularized into effete impudent snob. Perfect phrase there characterizing his injurious insult of Gov. Lilia Pineda when he imposed the presence of former Gov. Eddie Panlilio right at the very presidential table during the regional peace and order council meeting in Clark last October.

Panlilio was trounced by Pineda in the 2010 elections. What personality had he even just to attend that RPOC meeting exclusive to local government units and the police?

Panlilio is the 2013 official bet for Pampanga governor of the Liberal Party which Roxas heads. Insolence written all over there. And Roxas said he had taken a leave of absence as LP president so as not to give any impression that he uses the DILG for partisan purposes? Effete snobbery, if not thick-faced hypocrisy, there indeed.

Insolently impertinent – doubly, aye, redundantly, impudent – was Roxas in tagging Pampanga as election hot spot.

Pampanga is perceptibly, if not officially, ranked fourth – behind Laguna, Cebu and Cavite – among the Most Progressive Provinces in the country, and ahead of Pangasinan, Bataan, Davao, Iloilo and Palawan. Go check the web.

To put Pampanga now in the same league as Abra, Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Masbate and Basilan is the depth of stupidity, the abyss of absurdity, the nadir of irrationality, that could have only been born from obstinate insolence.

Progress can’t exist, much less thrive, in unpeace and disorder. A fact that won’t tax the intellect of the gnat. That Pampanga is progressive makes a clear negation of its hotspot listing. 

We just have to give it to Roxas, the Absurd. 
Absurdier yet is the general silence of political leaders – with the exception of the ever-loquacious Jerry Pelayo, Candaba mayor and president of the Pampanga Mayors League – over Roxas’ damned list.

The LGEs high-dogging it with their tails between their legs? Or Roxas got their shrivelled balls in his hands?     

YES, I will not vote for Roxas. As I will not vote for Binay. Wonder if I will vote at all in 2016.