EDITORIAL - Critical cooperation

No president can please everybody, and performance ratings of all chief executives in this country slip after several months in office. President Aquino should not worry about the threat of the opposition faction allied with his predecessor – or at least a faction within that faction – to launch a “frontal attack” against him in the coming days.

The faction reportedly feels singled out in ongoing efforts to make public officials account for anomalies of the past. If corruption is perpetrated with impunity in this country, it is because only the small fry in an ocean of sharks have been punished or held accountable since the collapse of the Marcos dictatorship. And if anti-graft prosecutors went on with business as usual, even the small fry would be allowed to get away.

The President should not allow himself to be sidetracked by threats. Criticism works only when the arguments are valid and the critic has earned the right to criticize. If your nine years in power was marked by a long string of corruption and vote-rigging scandals, you are hardly in any position to lead the charge and strike a belated blow for good governance.

Yesterday, certain opposition figures clarified that for now, they intended to continue their “critical cooperation” with the Aquino administration. Ten months is still too early to carp about the President’s leadership style and supposed failure to address pressing problems. Many of the country’s current economic problems, including soaring fuel prices and inflation, are driven in large part by global developments. On top of these difficulties, President Aquino must confront several roadblocks, many of which have been placed by forces identified with the previous administration, in his struggle to move forward his good government agenda.

This is not to say that the Aquino administration has performed perfectly since Day One or that the President should be spared from criticism. Political opposition is indispensable in a healthy, functioning democracy. For the political opposition to be effective in providing checks and balances, however, it needs credibility – something that not all opposition figures in this country enjoy. There are enough credible personalities in the opposition who can play this role. They should distance themselves from those who still need to account for venality and other forms of betrayal of the public trust.