Butch Abad, the king

Budget Secretary Abad is a product of a school known for blue eagle, the king.

But now, he is derided as the king of pork barrel. 

Why is Abad the target of a concerted smear campaign? 

He has been taunted and ridiculed. He and his family have been called the “Abadingdings.” Actually I like the sound of “Abadingding.” It is a kind of onomatopoeia. The sound is sweet and endearing, jaunty and lilting.

He has been accused of nepotism and preserving a political dynasty. How can that be? The President appointed him and daughter Julia to be part of the Cabinet, and the people of Batanes elected wife Dina to be their representative in Congress. Nepotism and dynasty? 

His name has been dragged into the pork barrel scandal, with Janet Napoles’s dirty finger pointing at him as her mentor in the art of conning and scamming. Thus he is tagged as the “pork king.” That’s incredible. It would have been believable if Abad was called tapa king. The reason: The tapa served for breakfast at Fundacion Pacita, his home in Batanes, is most tender and juicy.

Anyhow, Napoles has been thoroughly exposed as an inveterate liar. The Philippine Daily Inquirer’s editorial on May 30, 2014 persuasively explains the deceit and skulduggery of Janet Napoles. 

The editorial’s introduction says it all: “It should be clear by now that the supposed tell-all exposé of alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim Napoles, complete with her own list of lawmakers and other personalities supposedly involved in the scam, is actually an elaborate scheme to evade moral responsibility and legal liability for the plunder of government funds. The soap opera she cunningly performed from her hospital bed, and which successfully courted national attention, was in fact designed to muddle the issue, confuse public opinion, and undermine the legal process.”

In fine, Napoles’s affidavits, without corroborative evidence, are rubbish. 

Yet, Napoles was able to frame, nay, spin the issue in a way that let the unwary think that her guilt is diminished.

It did not help either, to quote again the Inquirer editorial, that “there is the patina of official recognition….In this new scam, it was – we regret to say this – Justice Secretary Leila de Lima’s readiness to believe that, facing the possibility of death, Napoles was ready to bare all.” 

Napoles also benefited from Winnie Monsod’s Inquirer column on May 17, 2014. Monsod wrote: “The argument that she cannot be a state’s witness because she is guiltiest than most, I do not buy. The crime here is corruption – using public office for private gain. The scam may be hers, but she is less guilty than the lowest government employee involved, simply because she is not a public official and could not have executed her plans without these public officials’ direct involvement.” 

I can’t buy that either. First, defrauding government  and pocketing billions of pesos cannot be a less guilty offense. Second, Tanda, Sexy, Pogi et al. could not have stolen bigger amounts than what she bagged, if not for her ingenious scheme.

That “patina of recognition” gave Napoles the opening to counterattack. Whoa! She accused everyone – the bad, the ugly, and the good. Her goal, surmised Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda, was to “burn the house down.”

Burn the house down?

Here’s an insight different from Lacierda’s. “Burning the house down” is to destroy everything; everyone loses. But Napoles, Tanda, Sexy, et al. are shrewd; they fight not to lose. 

And they know they could bounce back, depending on the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections. They are aware that their current ally and protector would have good chances of winning the elections. The spoiler of course is PNoy and daang matuwid. 

Hence they wish to portray daang matuwid as an illusion. That corruption is systemic. They want to create the image that Tanda, Sexy, Pogi, Bonget and their ilk are no different from the decent guys like Abad, Jun Magsaysay, and the Pimentels, father and son. They are all part of the system; they are all casualties of a rotten system.

This is an old trick. Marcos the senior blamed the “old society.” Gloria Arroyo spread the propaganda that she was a victim of the system and hence she deserved mercy.

But the Napoles ruse fails because she simply does not have the evidence to substantiate her fantastic accusations. On the other hand, for instance, I have seen the evidence from Senator Koko Pimentel – the exchange of text messages, showing the attempt of Jenny (Napoles) to finance Pimentel’s senatorial bid and the Pimentel camp’s outright rejection of the offer. 

Yet, Napoles’s main blow was directed at Butch Abad, supposedly her mentor. The vilifiers place Napoles, the pork queen, and Abad, whom they label the pork king, side by side.

Why Butch Abad?

Why make Abad the main target? Lacierda offers an explanation, which unfortunately misses an essential point and which can be misconstrued. Said Lacierda: “Obviously nobody wants to hit the President because the President’s honesty, incorruptibility, reformist image can never be questioned. So they are trying to hit the people around him.” 

Lacierda is saying that the attacks are meant to hurt the President but because PNoy is almost foolproof, the enemies would rather hit his close friend and trusted ally. But a wisecrack can make Lacierda’s statement look ludicrous:  that Abad makes a good target because he is vulnerable to criticism; that he does not have PNoy’s sterling qualities.

But Abad is as honest, as incorruptible and as reformist as PNoy. There must be a more telling reason why Abad bears the brunt of the attacks.  

Indispensable role

True, the enemies want to diminish the strength and popularity of PNoy, which in turn will reduce the political capital he has to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections. The only way Tanda, Sexy, Napoles et al. can avoid a long prison stay is to reverse daang matuwid.

The strength of PNoy or the firm popular support he enjoys precisely rests on the political and economic reforms his administration has secured and continues to pursue. The role of Butch Abad here is indispensable.

He is the principal mover of the reforms in the Aquino administration. He is the administration’s philosopher, ideologue, strategist, and cadre. He is both a visionary and a pragmatist, two sides of the same coin that are necessary to make deep reforms last.

The changes he engineered are not confined to his department. He is the champion of open government. He was instrumental in the passage of hard measures like the sin tax and reproductive health. And he continues to push pending reforms, but without the flourish and the fanfare. 

It is unsurprising for the cabal of Tanda, Sexy, and Napoles to conspire with those who resist change, those who want to return to  “business as usual.” Their common goal is to weaken Abad and hence paralyze the reforms and derail daang matuwid. 

Abad would make a great president. Unfortunately, the average Filipino voter is not yet prepared to vote for president a seemingly bland Ivatan. 

But he, vilified as the king of pork, is really a king of reforms. – Rappler.com