Because his presidency is not this country’s “most promising” for nothing. Lest people be beguiled by Erap’s most recent display of charity, they ought to be reminded that he is the same president who has failed us as much as he has promised. Didn’t he vow during his inauguration that no relative, friend and kumpare will find favor in his government?

This is the same president who, in the wake of the jueteng exposé, promised to end all forms of government-sponsored gambling; who goes around professing love for the poor by distributing worthless land titles to them. Besides, it was also this same president who once intoned in fascistic fashion that rebels are not meant to be pampered but instead crushed.

So why believe him now? Why fall for what his underlings like Mike Toledo would also have us believe—that Erap’s turnaround on the capital punishment was a result of his being constantly bothered by it? When even pleadings of the Pope hardly could sway him to abolish it.

AND THEY CALL IT AN INVESTIGATION?
Clearly, the “I” in NBI stands for something else other than investigation, which isn’t any different from the police’s claim to having an intelligence unit. The agency recently concluded its probe of the supposed mansions of Estrada and his mistresses, on orders of the president himself, after finding nothing to establish their ownership by him.

This is, of course, the same NBI that routinely apprehends innocent civilians, so recently demonstrated in the wrong arrest of four alleged suspects in the case of missing PR man Bubby Dacer.

Obviously, the NBI merely followed a safe path and did not pursue one that may lead it eventually to Estrada, thanks to a layer of corporations owned by his cronies and mercenary lawyers as subterfuge.