Pray tell me, what in tarnation did Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, III spend P87 million for his trip to the United Kingdom and the United States for? No matter how Malacañang justifies it, I find this figure quite mind-boggling! Of course, the Palace immediately issued statements that PNoy brought home the proverbial “bacon” bagging US$ 2.5 billion in investments. Let’s check this out.
Did he really bag those US$ 2.5 billion investments that were pledged by US and UK investors? According to news reports, half of these investments or pledges came from Rolls-Royce, Asea Gaz Asia Ltd. and commodities giant Glencore, which owns the Philippine Associated Smelting and Refining Corp. (PASAR) in Leyte, while the other is a proposed US$150 million to develop plants that will convert organized waste materials into liquid biomethane with Aboitiz Equity Ventures (AEV).
In the case of Rolls-Royce, it signed a P280 million service contract with Cebu Pacific for the purchase and service of new airplane engines. From the looks of this deal, I don’t think is an investment as it is Cebu Pacific paying Rolls Royce for servicing their engines. In short, I don’t think that the poor people of this impoverished country would feel the impact of this “bacon” that supposedly PNoy bagged on his recent 6-day trip to the UK and the US.
Now back to the humongous amount of money that PNoy spent for his US and UK trip. If you divide the P87 million spent for that 6-day trip, PNoy spent P14.5 million a day. If you break it down to 24 hours in one day, PNoy spent P604,166.68 per hour. Waaah! Call it unbelievable that the very same people who complained that then Pres. GMA spent US$ 20,000 or nearly a million bucks for an expensive dinner in Le Cirque who are now in power would spend P604,166.68 bucks every hour during their six-day travel?
This, in my book, is wasteful spending of our meager resources, especially when the Aquino Regime could not give extra money to solve our classroom and teacher shortages, which benefits the poor. Shame! That fine dining with the Pres. GMA in Le Cirque got the ire of Filipinos (even if she also bagged millions of dollars in foreign investments) because as the pundits attacking the President said, “95% of all families in the entire archipelago earn less than P1 million per year! So spending that must money in one day was unthinkable.” In the spirit of transparency, may we now ask Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, III how the P87 million was spent on that trip?
Talking about PNoy’s meeting at the White House, it seems that even our staunchest ally, the United States hasn’t committed anything, although the PNoy asked the US for a radar to monitor the seas surrounding the Philippine archipelago. Actually, the Americans have so many military satellites in a geosynchronous orbit 22 miles above the earth and for sure, those satellites cover the West Philippine Sea.
But the report that I got from the Philippine Star last Monday was quite telling… when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton clearly repeated her “mantra” that “The US is neutral on the competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.” That the US State Department uses the term “South China Sea” obviously proves that she respects China more than the Philippines, otherwise she would have called it the “West Philippine Sea.”
Whether we like it or not, American doctrine focuses only in one objective… and that’s American interest and in this part of the world, Americans have a larger interest with China than in the Philippines. Like what I’ve been saying all along, the dream of ordinary Filipinos is to get that elusive “Green Card” from the US Embassy, this is why there are still long queues of Filipinos seeking entry to the USA even in these times when joblessness in America is on record breaking highs.
If only we fixed whatever is wrong with our nation, I’m sure the dream of ordinary Filipinos would change and that Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) would make a beeline to return home if and when jobs here would be plentiful. Alas, thanks to ugly politics that breed on making money from pork barrels, which come from our taxes, our politicians only think of themselves… and not the people. So we go on with our American dream.
In my book, PNoy returned empty handed and now he has to explain why he spent so much of people’s money for that trip to the US and UK. Now the news is… PNoy’s satisfaction numbers have dropped sharply according to the Social Weather Station (SWS), which I’ve always believed is part and parcel of the Aquino propaganda machinery. But now no matter how they “massage” the numbers, they can only do so much.
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Email: vsbobita@gmail.com.