There's something about Noynoy's car

Noynoy Aquino should not have sold his third-hand but still expensive Porsche, especially for the reason he offered the public — that driving around in it has become a great personal risk for him.

I have often been critical of Noynoy, but I was never one of those who criticized him for buying that car. I do not think public office should deprive anyone of personal privileges for as long as public money is not used and public interest is not compromised. 

To me, if everything about the Porsche is above board, then to hell with public opinion, especially if it is wrong. People will always have something to say about anything. That does not mean they are always right, or should be heeded.

This is the same with Noynoy’s love life. People will always be interested in the affairs of the country’s bachelor president. But that does not mean he can be dictated in his preferences by public opinion. Noynoy can only be president for six years. A wife will be his forever.

I do not think the presidency of Noynoy will rise or fall on the basis of his having the Porsche. The car is a curiosity only because it is expensive. But its cost notwithstanding, it is not a matter of grave state importance. Nothing wrong with it. He should have kept it.

However, my main objection to Noynoy’s decision to sell off the car lies with the supposed reason for the sale. I think it is pure hogwash for Noynoy to claim he is putting his life at risk driving around in it.

Look, nobody is really safe in this world, least of all presidents. There is always an element of risk wherever one is or in whatever one is doing. Risk to personal safety is something that all of us will simply have to live with.

But I believe Noynoy is no more at risk driving around in a Porsche than he is while eating hotdog on some sidewalk in a foreign country, or while stopping for red lights or getting stalled in Metro Manila’s infamous traffic owing to his refusal to use that darned “wang-wang.”

By saying driving around in his Porsche exposes him to great personal risk, Noynoy only succeeded in getting himself into a contradiction. How can he feel unsafe driving in a fast car and yet feel perfectly safe getting stalled in busy streets with nowhere to go?

So, just as with any contradiction, there must be one of the two clashing points that is untrue. And I think it is the one involving the Porsche. There is something about the Porsche that Noynoy is not making a clean breast of.

As I said at the outset, I saw nothing wrong with Noynoy acquiring the car, for as long as he used his own money. It was on this premise that I believed he should have paid the public no mind and kept the car.

But now that he has belatedly dropped it like a hot potato, and for a reason that I find to be an outright lie, I now begin to suspect that I was wrong in my initial presumptions and that there could have been more than met the eye in that expensive car.

Now that I have thought about it, I am reminded of Noynoy’s smoking, and his adamance against kicking the habit. Smoking is bad. There is no argument about it. Even Noynoy himself knows that — he even joined a health department campaign against smoking.

 But despite all the evils of smoking, Noynoy just refuses to give it up. So why did he give up the car? Personal risk? But so is smoking, in fact to a greater extent. So I guess it has to be something else, something serious enough for the son of Cory not to be truthful about.