EDITORIAL - Aquino gets unintended reprieve

President Aquino and his administration has been on the defensive ever since the Development Acceleration Program was exposed not only as unconstitutional by a unanimous Supreme Court decision but, more importantly, as a corruptive tool that puts to shame every other corruptive means that he has been accusing and prosecuting his political enemies of.

The DAP, given the tens of billions that Aquino siphoned off for political ends, makes its forerunner the PDAF, or the Priority Development Assistance Fund, as well as the Janet Napoles scam, look puny and puerile by comparison. That Aquino has consequently been given the monicker "King of the Corrupt" proves the seriousness and untenability of the situation he now finds himself in.

So unprepared was Aquino for this unseen reversal of roles that he has been driven to toying with the idea of gifting himself with another term as a way to buy time before he will ultimately be held accountable for his misdeeds once his immunity from suit expires in 2016. This attempt to secure another term, or even to secure emergency powers on the pretext of solving a looming power crisis, is an indication of an administration on the verge of panic.

This was the situation Aquino was mired in when, from out of the blue, he unexpectedly found some unwitting reprieve courtesy of a few hotheaded University of the Philippines students. The students, apparently without thinking of the consequences of their actions, foolishly attacked budget secretary Florencio Abad, the alter ego of Aquino, while he was on a visit to the school.

The antagonism toward Abad may have been expected, even richly deserved. He was, after all, the brains behind the creation of the DAP as a massive tool to siphon off public funds for use in whatever political purposes may come to the mind of the president. Abad was the DAP masterplanner, the inventor, the conceptualizer. But it was Aquino who, with his signature, gave it life. Without Aquino, the DAP would be stillborn. Without Aquino there would be no DAP.

Aquino, in effect, has dug himself into a hole from which it was very difficult to get out other than through a new term or some form of emergency power. But then the hotheads from UP had to physically attack Abad. Worse, they publicly gloated about it. All of a sudden, the momentum stopped, or at least slowed. All of a sudden, Abad, and by extension Aquino, deserved a little sympathy. All of a sudden, Abad and Aquino did not look so bad compared to the disrespectful students.

How stupid and unthinking could these few hotheads get. Did it not occur to them that the fight against corruption is not the only life struggle this poor country of ours is struggling mightily against? Did it not occur to them that we are also fighting against the erosion of goodness and decency in society, particularly the young? Did it not occur to them that people frown on hooliganism in the young more than they do the corruption of their elders?