VANTAGE POINT.

Byline: Luis V. Teodoro

I expect our friends in the media, especially in radio and print, as well as the block-timers and those in community newspapers, to monitor their own ranks. May you give life to the basic principle of your vocation: to explain vital issues; to be fair and truthful; and to raise the level of public discourse. [translation from the Filipino original mine]

-Benigno Aquino III, July 26, 2010

His revelations about the gargantuan bonuses MWSS executives had been getting despite a water crisis he refuses to call a crisis may have shocked those Filipinos whom tales of government corruption and profligacy have not desensitized.

The information that the Arroyo government had been importing tons and tons of rice way above what's needed, in the process further depleting the public treasury, may have even awed a public grown cynical over the conduct of its officials.

But puzzling instead was Benigno …