Regarding Kris

from Lowdown by Jojo Robles (Manila Standard Today)

http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/insideOpinion.htm?f=2010/january/19/jojorobles.isx&d=2010/january/19

Kris Aquino insists that what she does by herself should in no way be linked to the political fortunes of her brother. So, are we to assume, then, that anytime Kris mentions her brother in her various shows on the Lopez network, what she’s doing is not intended to boost the campaign of Noynoy Aquino in any way?

It works both ways, unfortunately, because that’s just fair. Kris Aquino cannot be identified with Noynoy only when she actively campaigns for him, or when everything is coming up roses in her long-running telenovela of a life.

Because she has decided to be Noynoy’s number one campaigner, she will have to realize that everything she does impacts on her brother. Especially because her brother doesn’t have a wife or children of his own, Kris must understand that she is more than just a sister to Noynoy, in the sense that the other presidential candidates also have siblings of their own.

Furthermore, it is foolish the make any sustainable distinction between Kris and Noynoy when the latter’s campaign hinges almost entirely on his family connections. We can no more disassociate Kris from Noynoy than we can say that nothing Ninoy or Cory did has any significance whatsoever on what their son, the current candidate, is doing now. But that’s what you get when you stress family ties too much, as Noynoy Aquino has done so far in the case of both his parents. Probably to offset his own dearth of visible accomplishments, Noynoy has decided to emphasize those of both Ninoy and Cory—a strategy that has served him well and that has gotten him this far.

But Cory and Ninoy are dead political saints whose legacy Noynoy can safely mine without anyone, except those who never really liked either of them, raising an eyebrow. Kris, because she is very much alive—and given her turbulent personal history writ large in tabloid bold type—presents a different set of challenges for Noynoy’s campaign, however.

To her credit, Kris is a major media outlet all to herself, thanks to the high-profile show business-oriented programs that she hosts as a colegiala-sounding Inday Badiday. This makes her a very effective means of propagating awareness of Noynoy, a task that she has never shied away from on an almost daily basis.

It also helps that Kris’ shows are probably beyond the reach of the gatekeepers of her network’s news and public affairs department, being stand-alone entertainment programs instead of regular news offerings. This is why Korina Sanchez, the new wife of Noynoy’s running mate Mar Roxas, has had to take a leave from her duties as a headlining broadcast journalist of ABS-CBN.

Kris, however, does not have to stay off the air during the duration of the campaign. And because the Lopez family that owns ABS-CBN has always been understandably sympathetic to and supportive of the Aquino family (they made Kris the star that she is, after all), it’s unlikely that anyone really wants to make a stink about this apparent anomaly over at Kapamilyaville.

(That said, the ABS-CBN news department, in a follow-up story on the so-called “sugod” issue, produced not one but two supposed political analysts who said that the Valle Verde brouhaha could only be good for Noynoy, because it will elicit sympathy for Kris—and votes for Noynoy, by extension. Who says the fates of the siblings aren’t intertwined?)

* * *

But Kris Aquino, as the incident at Valle Verde proves, is also a magnet for the sort of publicity that can’t really be considered positive for Noynoy. And when that sort of thing happens, it’s just wrong to pretend that nothing Kris does has any effect whatsoever on what Noynoy is doing.

In other words, if it’s fair for Kris to endorse her brother on all her shows, it should also be fair for some people to wonder if she won’t make a very scary First Sister. And it must also be fair, as the uncle of the young woman Kris was supposed to have confronted said in so many words, not to vote for Noynoy because of what Kris has done—or even because of what she’s capable of doing.

If Kris is working to get Noynoy elected (and she is obviously working very hard), the voters have the right not to vote for him because of her, as well. Either you accept that, or the entire “Noynoy should be president because his parents were good people” argument crumbles, too.

It’s either you buy into the whole Aquino family deal or you don’t. And, last we checked, Kris Aquino is a very important (if overly controversy-prone) part of that family.

Of course, every family has a member who sometimes does things that the rest of the clan doesn’t approve of, or who makes that family an object of derision to other people. No family is perfect, not even the Aquinos, despite the high regard with which their now-deceased parents are held.

But what’s really galling is the spin that the Aquino campaign is attempting to employ in the case of Kris and her current marital woes. It’s as if they expect us to believe that Kris is a member of the family only when she brings in votes and has nothing whatsoever to do with the campaign when she becomes tabloid fodder.

Will this selective treatment of Kris Aquino by her brother’s campaign handlers carry over if he gets to be president? What if she decides to confront some other woman in the future because she suspects her of trying to steal away her man—the difference being that she’s backed up by a contingent from the Presidential Security Group?

As one wag once joked regarding Kris, there is simply no middle ground: Some people either hate her, or else they hate her a lot.

That’s neither here nor there, really. But, please, just drop the very showbiz spin that Kris isn’t part of the family when her love life gets rocky and she decides to, as she says, save her marriage.