What were Joseph Estrada and Jejomar Binay doing in Cebu recently? Or maybe, the better question should be — why were the Cebuanos even bothering with these fine examples of what the darker side of the Filipino looks like?
Have we forgotten that Estrada is an unrepentant convicted plunderer, free only because he and the unscrupulous President Arroyo struck a secret deal? Or that Binay once barricaded himself in fortress Makati because he refused to recognize a lawful court order?
The very reason why Estrada is threatening to run again for president if the opposition cannot unite, or why he calls Binay, curiously the head of that great misnomer called United Opposition, as the next president, is because people forget easily and do not know any better.
Estrada and Binay are the living embodiment of walking contradictions. Estrada calls Binay the next president but makes threats of his own to run himself. Binay criticizes the pardon of the Aquino-Galman soldiers but sleeps on the same bed with a pardoned plunderer.
Estrada goes around talking of good government as if he had not been there and made a big mess out of his own governance. He talks of the poor but maintains many mansions. He claims to sympathize with their hardship while gulping down the most expensive liquor he can find.
Binay describes the pardon of the Aquino-Galman soldiers as meant to spite Cory Aquino, conveniently forgetting that at one time in his life, when asked to pay a fine of five thousand pesos, he did so by paying the amount in five centavo coins, to spite the authorities.
Cebuanos have always prided themselves in being a cut above the rest --- intelligent, independent, innovative and resilient. But sometime it is hard to believe that when we allow ourselves to play into the hands of the duplicitous and the cunning.
Of course it is easy to say that nobody is perfect, that even Cebuanos have their own soft underbellies. We can accept that. What is hard to swallow is when we practically volunteer to make our shortcomings the most painful and humiliating ones.
Cebu is home to the first Filipino who resisted foreign domination. Great battles in WWII have secured our freedom. Long before Edsa, the first anti-Marcos demonstrations sprang into action here. And all of a sudden we flip on our backs for Estrada and Binay?