Impeaching a president.

SABBATICAL NOTES. 17 JULY 2014. FRIDAY. N2. 
Impeaching a president. 

THE RUSH to have SB Aquino III impeached is rushed. 

While the whole soap opera of impeachment has become a cottage industry in a banana republic like the Philippines, it is no longer a laughing matter. 

We have issues with this president, like his impossible action in the face of Haiyan, and that unforgettable statement, 'You did not die, right?.'

His is a statement that suggests only callousness, apathy, and ignorance of what is it to be in the middle of a catastrophe and having survived and not be counted as one of the estimated 10,000 plus dead even if his government keeps on denying this, with rotting bodies still being dug up lately, and with overpriced pigsty being passed off as temporary housing for the evacuees.

His callousness on DAP and his stance on the interpretation of the law by the Supreme Court no less is not in keeping with his office.

His taking in people in his Cabinet, people who steal, people who line their pockets, and people who have become opportunists--these are things that he is responsible of, and he must say, 'The buck stops with me.'

He must say that with courage. And boldness. And daring.

He sought the presidency, and therefore, he must pay the people back, the very people who put him there, in that public office. People put him into office because he sought it, and he promised to the deliver the goods of collective life to everyone.

Despite these setbacks, he must continue to govern, and respond to the issues raised by well-meaning people who have put together the first act of impeaching him.

There are opportunists, of course, some quarters whose only work is to keep on bad-mouthing him, and playing up on anything he missed as a reason for impeachment.

In a tongue-in-cheek way, some of these people might be thinking now of having him impeached because at more than 50, an advanced age following the illogic of ageism, he could have been a grandfather and yet he has remained happily and contentedly single.

He must have been a monk, perhaps a Benedictine, a Trappist, a Franciscan Conventual, or a Cistercian in his past life, and so, this holy celibacy is coming back to him, and now, these people who have nothing to do but deny the president his own single blessedness, is to use this as another basis for impeachment.

Ah, holy cow!

Ah, we live in interesting times.

And onli in da Pilipins.