MANILA
President Benigno Aquino III must be quaking in his loafers now that a prelate somewhere has demanded his resignation.
The deadly encounter between police commandos and Muslim fighters in Mamasapano, Mindanao, last Jan. 25 has spawned a lot of noise calling for Aquino to resign or be impeached.
The Roman Catholic archbishop of Batangas wants Mr. Aquino to give up his post. Yes, just like that, even without concrete proof that the President is directly culpable for the deaths of 44 Special Action Forces commandos of the national police.
Let’s grant for a moment that there is a justification for the bishop’s demand. The problem is that the bishop himself doesn’t know how his own scenario should play out.
He doesn’t want Vice President Jojo Binay to take over the moment PNoy (the President’s media nickname) resigns. If I heard him correctly over TV/radio, he doesn’t want the Constitutional successors to succeed the President, either. Not the vice president, not the senate president, house speaker or the chief justice.
So who the h.ck does he want to take Aquino’s position?
This is the problem with knee-jerk reflexes, they’re half-baked. A lot of people squawk like chicken layers whenever there’s movement near their nests. They should instead come up with well-thought-out proposals before they open their beaks.
From the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, the Left wants Aquino to go, too. They’re threatening the President with impeachment. Which the Speaker of the House himself just laughed off.
One of the leftist party-list representatives, being realistic about the futility of an impeachment try, wants Aquino to be toppled through extra-constitutional means or, plainly speaking, a coup d’etat.
The matter of an impeachment first. The leftists in Congress should go ahead and push for an impeachment in the lower house, instead of just, again, squawking in front of media.
Second, a coup d’etat. The leftists know they don’t have the numbers in getting the President impeached and convicted in the Senate. So now they, or at least one of them, wants Aquino ousted by a coup.
Taste the illogic of such a proposal. A left-leaning politician craving extra-constitutional action by right-wing forces. How delicious is that as an example of base opportunism? You want your dirty work done by someone else. And by forces opposed to your ideological beliefs at that?! That’s desperation.
The authorities haven’t shed light fully on what really happened in the Mamasapano encounter. They have pleaded for sobriety and restraint while waiting for the official results of the various probes into the massacre. But that hasn’t stopped many people from giving their two-cents’ worth of conjecture, and even misinformation.
The bottom line, though, is that the President is accountable for the disastrous outcome of the raid to capture two terrorists in Maguindanao (one was killed; the other one got away). But let’s hold our horses until we really know the truth.
The noise we’re hearing in the meantime is just pure opportunism from segments of society that are trying desperately to regain whatever relevance they had before. They’re not helping their credibility by issuing inane sound bites and basking in the klieg lights of photo-ops.
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