Binay’s breakaway

It was just a matter of time before Vice President Jejomar Binay resigned from the Cabinet. When it happened, it wasn’t surprising that he pulled no punches when it came to railing against the Aquino administration.

Binay chiefly described the incumbent government as being “manhid” (insensitive, callous) and “palpak” (incompetent) and, further down in his speech at the Coconut Palace last week, accused it of being corrupt and biased in its prosecution of the political opposition, of which he officially declared himself as head after quitting President Benigno Aquino III’s Cabinet.

Binay’s timing of his resignation may or may not have been good—more than a year before the 2016 elections—though his advisors like Muntinlupa Rep. Toby Tiangco have given chock-full of lousy advices lately like their ill-advised move to question Sen. Grace Poe’s citizenry, competence and birth.

Then again, his spokespersons have claimed that Binay will act as fiscalizer and constructive critic of the Aquino government, which he could have done with more vigor even before allegations of corruption involving his 21-year mayoral rule of Makati City surfaced well over a year ago.

Binay’s tirades against the incumbent administration—disbursement acceleration program (DAP), pork barrel funds, the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) and the Mamasapano massacre–are nothing new and have, in fact, been articulated better by groups of people who trooped to the streets and made their voices heard and whose backgrounds aren’t tainted by the charges now leveled at him.

Binay may have conveniently skipped the part where his identified allies—Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile and Sen. Jinggoy Estrada—are in jail for allegedly benefiting from their pork barrel funds.

In fact, one need only look at the mansions, the trail of wealth and the cost estimates of the Makati City Hall building that end up at the Vice President’s doorsteps as recounted by his former ally turned critic Ernesto Mercado and Binay’s continuing defeaning silence for people to see where the country’s No. 2 official truly stands on.

With his resignation, there’s nothing short of election laws that is stopping Binay from touring the country to gain public sympathy and support as well as lashing out at critics and perceived political opponents like Poe, whom he must realize early on is someone who shouldn’t be trifled with nor trampled upon.

Binay is now his own man, so to speak, and he can rail against the administration anytime he wants to but if he keeps hiding behind his clique of spokespersons and relegates any questions about the alleged corruption he committed to the courts, he risks the very real prospects of being rejected by the voting public whom he is now free to court between now and the end of the campaign period.