Aquino on Binay: The people know who is telling the truth

President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III (middle) with his Cabinet members
(Photo from Aquino’s official Facebook page)

MANILA – President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III remained unperturbed by Vice President Jejomar “Jojo” Binay’s attacks on him and his administration as he believed that the Filipino people knew who was telling the truth.

Aquino disclosed that he would rather focus on fulfilling his duties and continuing his reforms than waste time distressing on Binay’s opposition.

“My interest is to maximize all the opportunities for our people, to run this country… I have a responsibility to make this society, this country better. I will not allow myself to be distracted by talks of politics when I think it is very clear to the people who is telling the truth, and who is lying,” he told reporters at the sidelines of a conference.

With Binay quoting Aquino’s mother former president Corazon Aquino’s rallying call, ‘tama na, sobra na’ in his television address to the Malacañang, Aquino asserted that Binay cannot compare his administration to that of late president Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship.

“Maybe you would ask, how do I feel? It’s a given to every Filipino, you put yourselves in my position… The people felt the litany of wrongdoing of the dictatorship, all of them were the fault of the dictatorship… I did not treat him (Binay) wrong and this is what he repays me with? So, I say to him, ‘Thank you,” Aquino said in separate statements.

Binay recently quit as the chief of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council and the presidential adviser on OFW Affairs. Aquino was only surprised with Binay’s sudden resignation.

“I was a bit surprised why there was a resignation at this time. So I called him up and eventually we got to talk and I asked him specifically what the reason was. I think the word I used was ‘casus belli’. What was the immediate reason that prompted him to do this action?” Aquino recalled.

“He said there were many and that he would write them down and send them to me. When our conversation ended, I told him, ‘Okay, I will wait for it’… Yesterday, although it was not unexpected, in his statement, he mentioned that he was now the opposition,” he added.

On Binay’s television address stating his reason for detaching himself from Aquino’s Cabinet, he mentioned the administration’s ‘selective justice,’ criticized it for being ‘insensitive and inefficient,’ questioned the ‘PDAF and DAP,’ among other issues.

To this, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima would only tell Binay to settle corruptions allegations against him first before pointing out the administration’s flaws.

“He should first put his own affairs in order, especially the corruption cases against him and members of his family… No administration is perfect. However, it is a fact that world perception of the Philippines has never been better in the past five years because of the President’s anticorruption campaign and reforms in the bureaucracy,” De Lima claimed.