Bambi Eloriaga-Amago
Earlier today (Aug. 3,) Vice President Jejomar Binay delivered what he called the “kontra-SONA” or the “true State of the Nation” Address, highlighting what his party claims as the true state of the Filipino masses as opposed to the picture President Benigno Aquino III painted in his own SONA delivered exactly one week ago.
Though people at CavSU (Cavite State University, where Binay’s SONA was delivered) cheered enthusiastically, social media though, showed a different picture. Election fever has yet to reach its peak, but for a while now, several anti-Binay sentiments have been posted on Facebook. Some groups, such as The Thinking Class of the Philippines and the Netizens’ Coalition Against Binay, have been very vocal in their position. However, one particular anti-Binay post is quickly making the Facebook rounds.
It is a blog post supposedly written by Nathaniel von Einsiedel, a well-respected architect and urban planner who has had over 30 years experience in urban development planning and management in both the government and the private sector. He has also lent his expertise in technical assistance programs in developing countries. In the viral post, Von Einsiedel details knowing Binay since their student days as well as working with him in various government programs. He also lists his reasons why he won’t vote for Binay.
His post in its entirety follows:
“The recent columns of Randy David and Sara Soliven de Guzman in the major dailies give us a pretty good picture of what a Binay presidency would be like — it will be a disaster. The problem, however, is that the average Filipino does not read or understand their analytical writings. Anyway, I agree with them a hundred percent, not just because I believe in their analysis, but because I had worked directly with Binay in the past and, therefore, have personal knowledge of how he thinks and does things. And it is based on this that I will not vote for him come 2016.
I have known Jojo Binay personally since we were in college at UP Diliman. He was a fraternity brother of one of our neighbors in Area 1 where I grew up. He frequented our neighbor’s house and that’s how we got to know each other. After college, it was already in 1986 when I saw Binay again, when he was appointed by then President Cory Aquino as acting mayor of Makati and later on as Governor of Metro Manila in a concurrent capacity. Because of my job at the Metro Manila Commission, I got to meet with Binay on a regular basis, often assisting him in his meetings with the Metro Manila mayors and senior officials of national agencies. On many occasions, I had to join him on early morning site inspections and even late evening meetings.
My working relations with Binay took a break when I resigned from government [and] accepted the invitation of the United Nations and worked abroad from 1990 to 2004. When I returned home, we revived our relationship. From 2004 up to a few years ago, my consulting firm, CONCEP, was engaged by Makati City for a number of projects, such as the Makati Pabahay Project, Makati Development Agenda for the 21st Century, the Jupiter Street Urban Renewal Plan, the MACDA Housing Project, the Barangay Rizal Disaster Oriented Urban Redevelopment, and the Makati Poblacion Heritage Conservation Program. In the course of working on these projects, I had to confer with Binay frequently and thus developed a deeper insight on how he thinks and operates as a public official.
