Wangwang

It was the reference to these sirens utilized by the powerful (or those feeling powerful) that left a lasting impression on the throngs at the new President's inaugural and those watching from their television sets. And indeed why not?

The siren or more commonly referred to as "wangwang" because of the sound it makes, has long been the symbol of how those in power (read: elected public officials and government functionaries) brazenly defy the law that obliges everyone else. If President Benigno Aquino III is very serious in initiating government reforms just as he claimed during the campaign period, then why not include something as pedestrian as the wangwang?

That the "wangwang" or the abolition of its use has struck a powerful chord among the public only confirms the deep dissatisfaction and frustration that the people have with the Mrs. Gloria Arroyo's administration. It was during her terms that callousness in the exercise and display of one's power reached such a peak that outrage has become a permanent state of mind.

President Aquino's abolition of the wangwang has come to convey the new administration's intent to make its policies and decisions truly palpable and beneficial to the people whom it serves, to the people it now calls "Boss."

President Aquino has to be warned, however, of how his own party, the Liberal Party (LP), can prove to be his own nemesis in his quest for change. Already, turncoats and political butterflies have been joining the ranks of the LP in droves. Many of them trapos, these turncoats jeopardize that vision of reform and change which galvanized the nation into installing Aquino as the nation's 15^th President.

In Camarines Sur, for instance, 5^th District Representative Sal Fortuno has been sworn in as LP member after leaving the Sen. Manny Villar's Nacionalista Party (NP). Apparently, the LP's overriding concern to get the numbers in order to secure for Quezon City Rep. Sonny Belmonte the House Speakership had eroded reservations about taking in just anybody. Clearly, the LP is compromising itself and the President for being unscrupulous.

Incidentally, we ask: how long before Camarines Sur Gov. LRay Villafuerte abandons NP and becomes an LP member? As speculations have it, Fortuno's defection was just the beginning for those who aligned themselves with Villafuerte. It would indeed be amusing that Gov. Villafuerte who starred in that melodramatic campaign ad endorsing Villar (Remember how he emoted in saying "An sakuyang president mayong iba kundi si Manny Villar"?) would swear fealty to the LP. But then again, perhaps the young governor has a greater sense of delicadeza than his other erstwhile partymates.

Wangwang is out, but alas, trapos are coming in into the LP, the President's party. President Noynoy's efforts at reforms need to go beyond symbolic gestures of abolishing the powerful's siren; they must also entail an overhaul of his party's strategies.