The president and his vice

Pardon the pun. Although I am actually tempted to talk about the vices of our President like his smoking, his love for guns and his kabarilans, his penchant for high-end cars, although the latter was curbed after that Porsche incident, and women?

But this is more about President Benigno Simeon Aquino III and Vice President Jejomar Binay who are now on the warpath after heated exchanges via the media.

Binay started it when he criticized the President, citing alleged corruption in government despite the “daang matuwid (straight path)” claims of the administration, the insensitive treatment of the Mamasapano slaughter, and of course, the selective justice the vice president has been saying.

Not that there is no truth to Binay's claims. The administration, although it has done a lot of good as well, has had a lot of flaws which started just months after the President sat down in office.

Who could ever forget the Luneta mishap where the incompetence of an undersecretary was evident and it turned out, his only credentials was that, he was a gun-mate of the President.

And there is also truth to the insensitivity claims of Binay with regards to the Mamasapano incident that actually resulted to the lowest trust ratings of the President.

As to selective justice, while my heart doesn't bleed for Binay on this issue and I believe there is some truth to big time corruption in Makati, it is evident that his family is being targeted here, and the timing is suspect due to the coming elections.

The administration cannot deny that there are allies whose names have been linked to corruption as well, particularly in the PDAF case. Yet up to now, only those who were clearly in the opposition have been charged and we have yet to see a close friend of the President actually hauled to court.

So yes, I believe Binay has the right to make such pronouncements but that doesn't erase the fact that he has to answer all those allegations against him in court as well. His defense of crying that he is being politically persecuted will not hold even among the masses when all the evidence against him and his family will be revealed.

As such, in this word war between the President and his Vice President, the eventual beneficiary of this will be the gracious Senator Grace Poe and not Interior Sec. Mar Roxas.

Because while Mar has been decent enough not to take the bait and be drawn into the word war, he is the obvious beneficiary of the President's actions including the slew of cases they've lodged against the Binays.

While Poe just emerged recently as an alternative candidate also because the administration, no matter what they do, has not found the right formula to endear their presumptive presidential bet to the masses.

In fact, as recent surveys have shown, Binay could have been the runaway candidate if Poe's name did not crop up and now the latter is actually the more serious threat in this election to him than Mar will ever be.

What is interesting though is the fact that the President and Binay are supposed to be close to each other and even forged alliances in the last election that led to Mar's losing the vice presidential race.

There were even reports that if the presidency will be a fight between Binay and Mar, the Aquino sisters will actually support the former because of Binay's relations with their mother, President Cory Aquino.

Whichever way this word war goes, Binay will likely benefit from it because of the publicity he will gain. After all, in this world, bad news is still news and for as long as your name is mentioned, there will always be name-recall and that should be enough for the many who do not have a care in the world whatever happens in Malacañang. *

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