EDITORIAL - PNoy resign? No, let us suffer our 2010 mistake!

From different directions, including a few bishops, have come calls for the resignation of President Aquino. The president is being blamed for the deaths of 44 members of the Philippine National Police Special Action Force who were ambushed and massacred by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters as they were withdrawing from a successful mission to neutralize a notorious Malaysian terrorist in Mamasapano town in Maguindanao last January 25.

Having Aquino resign this late in his term will not do the country any good. He has just a little over a year left before he steps down. Better to wait out the remainder of his term and take our chances again in the 2016 elections, in the same manner that we took our chances in 2010. In the election of that year, more people wisely did not vote for Aquino but unwisely split their vote on a number of other candidates. This left enough minority votes to send Aquino to Malacañang.

This country will have everything to lose if Aquino resigns now. For one, it will leave the door open for Vice President Jejomar Binay to take over. There is no question that by operation of law, he should take over. And Binay is so much better qualified than Aquino. But Binay is not exactly in the best of political health these days. He, too, has his own demons to contend with, and may not have the strong credibility, and some spare, to shepherd the country safely toward 2016.

Having Aquino step down will also fry for the second time the majority of Filipinos who did not vote for him. This majority of Filipinos, who made the mistake of not voting for one single opposing candidate, has had to endure for nearly five years now a presidential incompetency that is unmatched in the annals of Philippine political history. Never has one so incompetent and unqualified for the presidency been so ironically lucky as to end in the lap of the presidency he does not deserve.

The majority who rightly did not vote for Aquino will be fried for a second time if Aquino resigns because, while they will be proven right, they will be made to suffer the consequences of the folly of the minority. Good if the chaos that could ensue from a power vacuum or an unstable succession will skewer only the minority who brought us all this trouble. But no, everyone will suffer, including the majority who already saw this coming but whose warning were ignored and left unheeded.

So, as Kurt Vonnegut Jr. said, having gone this far on a fool's errand, it is better to preserve the honor of fools by going and completing the errand. We have brought ourselves to this fine mess by installing Aquino in Malacañang, for no other reason than that he is the son of Cory and Ninoy. So what else is there but to eat humble pie and suffer the folly we foisted on ourselves.

As we hardy and durable Cebuanos would say with bitter humor in intentional carabao English -- "I told you not to go to, you go to, now look at," a take on the unheeded Cebuano admonition and its dire but unspecified consequence that goes "giingnan ta ka nga ayaw og adto, niadto gyud ka, na tan-awa." Filipinos were warned in the election period of 2010 that Aquino simply did not have it. Now that he has shown he really does not have it, you ask him to resign?