'Noynoying' shames its perpetrators, not P-Noy

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile (JPE) offered President Noynoy Aquino (P-Noy) unsolicited advice last Sunday, saying that P-Noy shouldn’t be bothered by the recent “Noynoying” gimmick of the militants branding the president as lazy and clueless. 

JPE said in Filipino over DZBB: “I have gone through that in past years. There are groups that have nothing better to do than engage in name-calling. Yet if you put them in posts of responsibility, they are not likely to produce results.”

JPE recounted how he too had been called several names especially during the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship where he served as defense minister. Enrile narrated how he had been labeled as a “matador” (butcher), “diktador” (dictator) and “Martial Law administrator.”

JPE is right — it’s not worth P-Noy’s time to bother with inanities like this latest Leftist noynoying gimmick. If P-Noy gives this gimmick a response, it might become counterproductive. Presidential response will give it a semblance of hitting a sensitive nerve, thereby inviting more public attention. Noynoying is absolutely baseless, if not outright insulting to a head of State, and doesn’t deserve presidential rebuttal.

However, your Chair Wrecker isn’t the president and isn’t bound by JPE’s advice to ignore the Leftist gimmick. Your Chair Wrecker had consistently advocated for media reform in order to bridge the Information Gap in our country. The Information Gap allows those who are under informed to be more vulnerable to being exploited and manipulated.

Two factors perpetuate the Information Gap — the lying rabble-rousers and the gullible, lazy and showbiz addicted media in our country. If media in our country were up to the professional standard of the New York Times, noynoying would not even get to first base. At best perhaps, noynoying will simply be mentioned by the New York Times as the latest inanity from a usually inane group of rabble-rousers. Over here, the top TV newscasts simply covered noynoying and presented it without as much as challenging it or demanding that the militants justify that brand that they just peddled.

Filipinos as news consumers should take offense when our media provide sloppy coverage like this. There are very serious complications here that could negatively affect our shared aspiration of moving our country forward. Should these militants have their way, we will find ourselves cooperating in hindering the work of a hard working, honest president in his mission to pave DAANG MATUWID (straight path). A president like P-Noy deserves our full support and cooperation, especially after the disillusionment and irregularities that we suffered from the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) regime.

Just consider some of the accomplishments of the P-Noy administration in its first 18 months in office to see how big a lie noynoying is. We are enjoying our highest level of stock market performance, hitting over 5,000 index points. Our currency is one of the most stable, even out steadying the so-called Euro nations. S & P, HSBC Research, Goldman Sachs et al have been predicting that in Asia we’re the economy to invest in. Foreign direct investments (FDI) from Japan alone have surged to P256.1 billion, 30.6 percent higher than the P196.1 billion registered in 2010, and our highest FDI since 1996 when we hit P241 billion.

Unemployment figures are going down. Crime rate index is significantly reduced as the number of apprehended criminals has significantly increased. Wayward cops are immediately dealt with. Ineffective policemen, like those in UP Los Banos, have been quickly replaced.

Our men in uniform are enjoying an all-time high in morale. The P-Noy administration has already provided 21,800 housing units for them in Luzon while 31,200 more are due for construction and turnover in the next 15 months. P-Noy had allotted P28 billion for 18 projects under the Armed Forces of the Philippines modernization program where only P33 billion was spent in 15 years by previous administrations.

To further aid the military and the police in their work, P-Noy has brought electric power to 1,520 sitios in a period of just 19 days last year and for a total cost of just P1.3 billion. Where P1 million for each sitio was spent in the past, “we were able to do so only for P700,000 per sitio. This is proof that when one is on the straight path, we can respond to the needs of Filipinos, not in due time, but immediately,” P-Noy recently announced.

When have we last had a president with the political of P-Noy? He dared to go against the Catholic Church on the RH Bill issue. He dared to go against the INC (Iglesia ni Cristo) in the Renato Corona impeachment trial. He dared to go against one of the most powerful lobby groups, the tobacco and spirited beverages companies, in pushing for the Sin Tax Reform. He denied the popular clamor for reducing the VAT on fuel knowing that this will create a worse scenario — an erosion of our impressive fiscal position that has been boosting investor confidence.

In the 18 months that P-Noy has been president, there hasn’t been a corruption scandal in the level of the ZTE-NBN Broadband deal, the Chopper scam and going-home bonuses for retiring top military and police officers.

Noynoying cannot shame P-Noy - but only those rabble-rousing Leftists and P-Noy haters perpetrating it.

Shakespeare: “Madness in great ones must never unwatched go.”

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Chair Wrecker e-mail and website: [email protected]. and www.chairwrecker.com.