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BY LUIS BUENAFLOR JR.
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Monday, January 2, 2017
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IT’S THE day after so I suppose Happy New Year is in order. By this time, Vice President Leni Robredo and her entourage including the yaya are probably in the country or in the process. I’m pretty sure they have a lot of excess baggage, what with all the presents and shopping courtesy of “Tita” Loida Nicholas Lewis. I don’t think any of the excess baggage would be the relief goods that Leni had a “hands-on” soliciting and packing.
Now that she is here I’m expecting anytime soon the sudden onslaught of her pictures all over the newspapers and social media in the Typhoon Nina-ravaged areas giving out relief goods all stamped with her name and probably in yellow packaging. Of course, it would not be complete if Leni is not wearing tsinelas” in all these photo-ops. In fact, I would be disappointed if she has her pictures taken wearing proper shoes.
Vice President Leni Robredo is not a puppet as some people are saying, please you’re too kind. I don’t think she is being controlled by Mar “Daang Matuwid” Roxas or that nincompoop Noynoy Aquino or any of the losers in the “yellow cult.” Everything that she’s been doing or saying is out of her own free will. She’s not some dumb broad that they can manipulate. At best she’s just an opportunist who’s making hay while the sun shines.
The closest we can get to someone she’s beholden to is probably Loida Nicholas Lewis, that Filipino-American billionaire who’s her main donor and adviser.
Take note people, if Leni did not seize the day, she would just be an obscure widow of a minor government official who died in a plane crash. She latched on to the Liberal Party’s brand of necropolitics and suddenly everything has been moving up for her. She became the next “Cory Aquino”, the symbol of necropolitics. She just has to be the Vice President because her husband died following the footsteps of Cory and Noynoy Aquino. And with all that came the trappings of the large and overflowing resources of the Liberal Party. From “careless whispers” her signing fee alone to be Mar “Daang Matuwid” Roxas’ vice president was P25 million.
From someone who posted in social media pictures of herself waiting for a bus to Naga (of course, we know that the picture is stage-managed as no provincial buses stop in the expressway to pick up passengers), she now is in the market for a new BMW. Again from someone who posted pictures in social media of their modest home in Naga, she reportedly owns a luxurious vacation home in Tagaytay.
And from someone who posted in social media pictures of herself and children spending Christmas in her husband’s grave in the cemetery, they now spend Christmas and New Year in New York at the luxurious penthouse overlooking Central Park of Loida Nicholas Lewis. Not bad for someone wearing tsinelas. That she cares for the “hoi polloi” is sheer hypocrisy; she does not owe them anything, her being Vice President is because the Liberal Party moved heaven and earth so she can be Vice President. Her main bailiwicks are the Precinct Count Optical Scanners or PCOS machines and not the people of Bicol.
And speaking of the tsinelas cult that she and the Liberal Party are advocating ostensibly honoring the memory of her husband, Department of Interior and Local Government secretary Jessie Robredo because of his penchant for wearing tsinelas because he was one with the masses. Offhand it sounded rather noble but Jessie Robredo was wearing tsinelas because he had to due to a severe case of ingrown nails and not because of being one with the masses. I’m pretty sure Jessie would love to wear a nice pair of Cole-Haan loafers instead of the tsinelas.
Now if they want to honor the sufferings of a man with a severe case of ingrown nails, there’s nothing wrong with that, this is a democratic country after all. We are all free to make fools of ourselves or not and that is why we have Vilmanians and Noranians./PN
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