A Memo for Noynoy

The Dear Noynoy letters have gotten old. The courtship and honeymoon days are over. It is now the time to work. So here's a memo instead.

TO: Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III, President of the Republic of the Philippines
FROM: Bronze Athena, Stakeholder and Citizen
DATE: September 8, 2010 (The Birthday of Mama Mary)
SUBJECT: Next Steps for Contemplation

TO: Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III, President of the Republic of the Philippines
FROM: Bronze Athena, Stakeholder and Citizen
DATE: September 8, 2010 (The Birthday of Mama Mary)
SUBJECT: Next Steps for Contemplation

The August 23 incident was an acid test. It was a test you didn't deserve. It came too soon, too harsh, too much. Compared with this, your mother's 9 coup attempts were walks in the park. The August 23 nightmare ought to have been GMA's punishment for failing miserably and stealing shamelessly. Given to Erap, that would have been injustice.

You apologized when you shouldn't. You should have fired all three of your communications managers for incompetence; your Executive Secretary for being an imbecile; the DILG head for being clueless; the DILG undersecretary for being useless; the PNP Chief for being shameless. And because you can't fire the mayor and vice mayor of Manila, you should have...

Then and only after then you should have apologized. Apologies before action are Macs with dual-boots.

What's done is done. But pick up the pieces. Then stand upright and do the following:

1. Fire your communications managers. Replace them with competent and highly experienced corporate communications professionals. Do not get someone from the media!

2. Fire your chief of staff. Replace him NOT with a classmate nor a batchmate nor a schoolmate nor a relative nor someone that you already trust but with someone you and the people CAN trust. This person has to earn it.

3. Fire the DILG mascots. Jollibee would have made a better man that day. No, not Binay. I already hated him his first week in office.

4. Abolish the PNP. Replace them with ROTC cadets and the Boy Scouts of the Philippines. At least the Boy Scouts are always ready and know how to make various types of knots and be creative and resourceful without being funny. The ROTC cadets can march and not duck.

5. Suspend for a month ALL local broadcast media networks and outfits that covered the hostage-taking live as if it were a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight. Then fine them equivalent to our average annual Gross National Income.

6. Stop apologizing to China and Hong Kong. Whimpering, we've been black and blue, kicked and spat on by a quarter of the world. If dolphins, whales and sharks could speak, they most likely would have joined the bandwagon. You have also apologized for smiling! So enough already!

9. Continue the investigation, fair and square, but not to satisfy the world and the Chinese. Do it because it is the right thing to do. Dignify poetic justice.

10. When you have replaced all who need to be replaced, do not commit the same mistake of putting them through a seminar on how to deal with media. It was utterly useless and a waste of tax money the first time. The second time, it will already be impeachable.

On August 23, hell broke loose and you found yoursef in the center of it. It was one test no other Philippine president known to Filipinos has gone through. Our naked ugliness bared to the world in high definition CNN sound and color. But God is a perfect God. He knows what He's doing. Consider yourself blessed. This is grace. This is an opportunity of a lifetime, a very important part of God's great design.

May God bless you more!