essay about the latest speech of ninoy aquino
My beloved countrymen, good evening. Over the past few months, a few topics have come to be the focus of public discourse. With the cacophony of discordant voices coming from many different sides, perhaps the subject of the Pork Barrel and DAP has begun to leave you confused. I am asking you for a few minutes of your time in order to bring clarity to these issues.
You are all witnesses to the conflict taking place. On one hand, there is you and your government, to whom you gave the mandate for change—a government that has implemented reform for the past three years and five months, pursuing the corrupt and working to alleviate poverty. On the other side, you have the corrupt officials allegedly involved in the Pork Barrel Scam.
Might I remind those who have forgotten: The real issue here is stealing. This is the topic they have constantly tried to avoid ever since their wrongdoing was exposed. I can’t help but shake my head, since the first thing I expected was for them to at least deny the accusations. After all, is that not the natural reaction of anyone who is accused of anything? And yet, in the midst of all their extended counter-accusations hurled against me, not once have I heard them say: “I did not steal.”
One would have hoped that out of respect for those who believed in, and voted, for them, these officials would have fulfilled their sworn duties. At the very least one would have expected them to explain how it happened that the beneficiaries of the NGOs they chose to fund was just a list of board passers seemingly culled from newspapers. But how can we take their excuses seriously, when after repeated instances of their giving money to the same NGOs, they had not once bothered to check if the funds they allocated actually reached the intended beneficiaries? This state of affairs is indeed difficult, even impossible, to explain away.
And since it is exceedingly difficult to explain, it seems they have taken the advice of an old politician
You are all witnesses to the conflict taking place. On one hand, there is you and your government, to whom you gave the mandate for change—a government that has implemented reform for the past three years and five months, pursuing the corrupt and working to alleviate poverty. On the other side, you have the corrupt officials allegedly involved in the Pork Barrel Scam.
Might I remind those who have forgotten: The real issue here is stealing. This is the topic they have constantly tried to avoid ever since their wrongdoing was exposed. I can’t help but shake my head, since the first thing I expected was for them to at least deny the accusations. After all, is that not the natural reaction of anyone who is accused of anything? And yet, in the midst of all their extended counter-accusations hurled against me, not once have I heard them say: “I did not steal.”
One would have hoped that out of respect for those who believed in, and voted, for them, these officials would have fulfilled their sworn duties. At the very least one would have expected them to explain how it happened that the beneficiaries of the NGOs they chose to fund was just a list of board passers seemingly culled from newspapers. But how can we take their excuses seriously, when after repeated instances of their giving money to the same NGOs, they had not once bothered to check if the funds they allocated actually reached the intended beneficiaries? This state of affairs is indeed difficult, even impossible, to explain away.
And since it is exceedingly difficult to explain, it seems they have taken the advice of an old politician