The dreaded 2016: Aquino and Abunda

THEREis nothing like talk of 2016 that brings out the ambitions of our politicians, i.e., Grace Poe and Cynthia Villar, on the same week, in seemingly unwarranted TV interviews, where neither of them were really talking about anything important or relevant.

I mean someone please take a stand about Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Florencio Abad’s resignation! Someone remind Malacañang that this is not about whether or not those Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) allocations went to good projects! Tell the President this is about whether or not there is proper and timely accounting of these projects, where we still wait for a list of projects even as DAP allocations have been happening since 2011.

Tell the President this is not simply about how these funds were used by the Executive (on Doppler radars and Project Noah we are told, and for which we still awaiting proper accounting), as it is about how everyone else, Congressmen and Senators, and every Line Department, used these funds.

And really, every Senator and Congressman, every government official, who has received funds for projects that we do not see: don’t just show us pictures and lists, give us accounting unlike any we’ve seen from Malacañang. Show The President’s Men what transparent accounting actually looks like, not with lump sums in the hundreds of thousands and millions, but a real breakdown of how much it cost to construct that school building, clean that river, relocate those informal settlers.

Otherwise, these pictures and lists are just white noise, pretending to talk about the DAP issue but in fact just trying to save their own asses. It’s about as entertaining as the news that Kris Aquino is running for Vice President and Boy Abunda for Senator in 2016.

No, wait.

Kris for VP

My love for Kris is well documented. I remember her selling everything from her then new boyfriend (Joey Marquez) to her expensive jeans and make-up and liposuction. Soon enough though we became privy to that romance’s unraveling—it didn’t even matter whether or not we cared, or if we were watching TV at all. Kris was in the news, telling us a thing or two about horrible break-ups that involve squeezing someone’s balls and flame retardant pillows.

Former President Cory was at Kris’s side, but much was said about the fact that her brother Noynoy (now President) was standing with her in this time of . . . heartbreak.

Okay, that was not just some normal heartbreak. It was about violence inflicted upon Kris. But too it was Kris, invoking her political power, telling her partner her family could ruin him, threatening to squeeze her partner’s balls in anger.

And Kris didn’t stop with him really. In truth, there is no love affair of hers that we do not hear about, no dirty linen that she doesn’t wash in public. Any guy she’s involved with we are privy to, and each of these men suffers the consequences of getting involved with Kris. No one else uses her pri- vate life to gain some media mileage the way Kris does. And when she is scorned, she comes out with a spoken word CD where she talks about her heartbreak.

She talks about her wealth, and uses Hacienda Luisita as context for one of her endorsements. She uses Hacienda Luisita and shrugs off issues about its farmers’ rights, and the violence inflicted on its farmer communities.

Kris has made a business of invoking her “honesty” and “transparency,” saying that she owes her public “the truth.”

This is without a doubt what she will use to run for any government position in the future, in 2016 and later. Certainly she will use the fact that she is not afraid to voice out her opinions—selling as she does a shampoo brand by invoking her being

This is all Kris will run on. That’s even less than what her cousin Bam ran on in 2013.

Boy for senator

This is the thing with Boy Abunda: he would be infinitely more credible were he not embroiled in this friendship with Kris Aquino. Were he not so clearly an Aquino friend, the kind that tends to defend the sibs to a fault, the one whose loyalty is never questioned.

He was also infinitely more credible when he was just managing talents, and not taking on the task of hosting talkshows, showbiz and otherwise, where there are more credible and skilled news and public affairs hosts out there. But of course that would mean no media mileage, and no delusion of running for public office.

Unlike Kris though we know little about Boy’s personal life, although he does fall into the trap of endorsing beauty clinics and lipid absorbers, i.e., pampapayat. Kris engages him in conversations about the way he looks and Boy can’t but respond with the same amount of ditziness and superficiality.

Boy at least has taken on the LGBT cause, and consistently, too, is very clear about where he stands with regard issues on homosexuality, and has supported Ang Ladlad Partylist’s causes.

But that is the limit of Boy’s social relevance, and it seems to me that it is too little for a senator to run on. An LGBT partylist seat seems to be more doable, more respectable, to start with. Where Boy might prove himself first and not just decide to run for the Senate because he can, and because he just might win.

The latter would be like doing a Kris (and Bam) Aquino. And that would mean he is not only the Aquinos’ staunchest defender, he also already thinks like the rest of ‘em.

The Liberal Party crisis

The question of why Boy and Kris would even think of running is one that stinks of the Liberal Party’s crisis. They must know that Department of Interior and Local Govenrment (DILG) Secretary Mar Roxas’s candidacy won’t be saved by some acting in front of the camera, his arms poetically pointing at sacks of rice in some warehouse or another. They must also be so threatened by a Binay candidacy, and know that at this point the only way to get a chunk of his votes is to have someone with just as much

appeal run under the Liberal Party, and possibly carry Roxas on her shoulders.

Of course there is also just cheating the 2016 elections— entirely possible and doable given those PCOS machines. And with Boy and Kris on the Liberal Party side, they’ve already got media spin well in hand.