Golden parachutes

IWAS reading reports about Noynoy Aquino leaving his Times Street man-cave to go to the Commission on Elections last Thursday when I started having an attack of deja vu. Then I realized: this was exactly what happened with those double steel gates that now protect Noynoy from the people whom he used to call his “bosses” on the street where he lives.

Aquino went to the Comelec offices to explain that his implementation of the P3.5 billion Dengvaxia immunization program at the twilight of his term did not violate election laws covering such projects, which is fine with me because my main objection to the anti- dengue vaccination scheme does not involve questions about whether election laws were flouted in the process.

But what really got my attention was Aquino’s insistence on presenting computer- generated graphs to explain why he approved the Dengvaxia program, which was totally unnecessary as far as the Comelec case was concerned. Noynoy showed printed, colorcoded graphs to bolster his old position that the Philippines was in dire danger of being swamped by dengue cases at the time he approved the vaccination program, which was why he had virtually no choice but to approve it.

Of course, as far as the Comelec was concerned, Noynoy only had to show timelines indicating the dates of the approvals for the funding for the Dengvaxia program. These would 45-day bans on the approval of new government projects ahead of a scheduled national election.

The Comelec was certainly not the venue for Aquino to explain why he had to push for Dengvaxia’s controversial use on more than 830,000 public schoolchildren and many others. And yet Noynoy apparently felt compelled to give his explanations.

You could say that Aquino probably wanted to “test drive” his Dengvaxia defense in as many venues that he possibly can. But I think Noynoy also wants to convince as many people as possible that he was not really engaged in securing some last-minute “pabaon” for himself approving the Dengvaxia program. Because by far the biggest flaw of Aquino’s belated explanations is that he could have made them before he approved the Dengvaxia program. And as far as I can recall, in the critical period that began in December 2015 closing of the vaccine’s purchase) to Department of Health started deploying Dengvaxia in the schools), I never heard him talk about the impending dengue epidemic that he now says existed back then.

*** Now what does this have to do with the P4.5-million gates that the Quezon City government built recently to protect Noynoy and his Times Street neighbors from protesters who, according to city authorities, were believed to be planning mass protest actions there? Well, it would surprise no one that the protests were supposed to be staged by people angry that Aquino decided to use an untested vaccine on their children, for starters.

But seriously, in the same way that Noynoy is only explaining now why the country needed Dengvaxia two years ago, he got city hall to belatedly build gates to protect him. Structures that he would not have needed, had he not done things like implement the vaccination program.

Clearly, the Dengvaxia program was a last-minute money-making scheme, a golden parachute prepared for Noynoy and his pals Janette Garin, Florencio Abad and the rest. There is no such thing as an impending dengue epidemic – not now, not at the end of Noynoy’s term, not even decades earlier, because dengue was never even in the top 10 dread diseases that plague this country.

And the only reason why Noynoy and his friends are still not in jail for masterminding and implementing the suspicious vaccination program, I think, is because the proper charges They will be, but only after the resignation in July of Noynoy’s chief legal protector, Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales.

As for those gates on Times Street, someone had to build them, as well, in order to make money out of the deal. Otherwise, if Noynoy was truly averse to seeing protesters in front would it have been for him to move back to his family’s well-protected ancestral home in Hacienda Luisita or someplace else?

What Noynoy is doing right now is finding altruistic reasons for old-fashioned corrupt practices, which he still wants us to believe never happened during his term as president. But unfortunately for him, the only person he ends up convincing is himself.

of his, who willingly suffer Noynoy’s cluelessness, because they make a pile of money out of it.