Aquino slams media critics on claims of laidback presidency

The 18-point plunge in the government’s overall performance rating might have stung President Aquino once again as he yesterday slammed, in a speech before company executives, two critical columnists who had attributed the recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey results to the Chief Executive’s laidback working style.

Departing from the original lines of his prepared speech, Aquino blasted the criticisms written by the two columnists whom he did not identify, saying in effect that he is lazy and not working hard enough to solve the country’s pressing problems today.

“I would like to start out with a comment I read in one of today’s columns — actually there were two columns, both of them critical — and they said I don’t work hard enough. For their information, this is my third engagement for the day,” Aquino told an audience attending the closing

ceremonies of the 32nd National Conference of Employers held at the ballroom of Marriott Hotel, Pasay City.

“I would like to start out with a comment I read in one of today’s columns. Actually there were two columns, both of them critical. And they said I don’t work hard enough. For their information, this is my third engagement of the day. I started out rising at 5:30 in the morning not because I have to plant some fields. But because I have to board the plane by 6:30 to go to two wakes, one in Cebu, one in Samar to attend the wakes of two of our partymates, one killed by assassination and the other due to health concern,” Aquino said in a speech at the 32nd National Conference of Employers held in Marriott Hotel.

Aquino made this statement in an effort to dispel the impression that he’s a late riser owing to his nightly habits.

Aquino did not explain whether his attendance to wakes early in the morning has something to do with his critics’ complaints about his failure to address the country’s woes in consequence of his laidback working style.

Aquino bragged about what he called his administration’s “achievements” in boosting the local economy, saying that “We have been burning the midnight oil trying to create an environment where business can thrive, and we have so far been successful,” he said.

He stressed that there a lot of companies that have decided to invest in the Philippines, and that thousands of jobs will have been created.

In slamming his critics, Aquino was evidently referring to former Senator Ernesto Maceda and media personality Ramon Tulfo whose columns appear in two daily newspapers of major circulation. Both columnists pointed Aquino’s short working hours and late night gimmicks in public bars—an opinion that has also appeared in the Daily Tribune’s editorials and other columns previously.

For Malacañang, the President was simply trying to “correct a misimpression” when he issued that blistering statement in public as deputy presidential spokesman Abigail Valte insisted that the word “laidback” is not the proper adjective to describe the Aquino presidency.

“I guess those who have the guts to say that the President is laidback only do that because they do not see his true working style and the things he does. I guess these people only choose to see what they want to see when it comes to the President,” Valte claimed.

“That was probably the President’s way really of addressing that particular issue because this has been circulating and we don’t want that sort of misinformation spreading around because certainly…it’s not true. So I think he felt the need to address that particular misinformation that has been going around,” she said.

Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said the other day that the public sentiments as reflected in the last SWS survey have already been taken into account by the government and would serve as its motivation to further enhance the way it is responding to the people’s needs.

“Right now, our focus is to really address economic concerns and that’s what we’re doing right now because we view this primarily as concern for the increases in oil and the attendant consequences of the price increase in oil… But whether the numbers go up, whether the numbers go down, we continue to do our best in serving the country,” Lacierda said. –Aytch S. de la Cruz, Daily Tribune