Just over a year after he left Malacañang, former president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III was on his way home from Greenhills late Saturday night – a rare moment when EDSA seemed like a real major thoroughfare than a parking lot – when cops on motorcycles sounded their sirens and waved at his car to make way.
He surveyed his lane and saw that there were no other vehicles around. Then came a silver luxury car without the necessary car plate for VVIP treatment. It was accompanied by a Mahindra police patrol car, perhaps one of the thousands his administration, he said, distributed to police units all over the country during his watch.
“I said to myself, ‘Wow, talagang feeling powerful ito (he really feels powerful),’” the former president recalled with a grin. “If ever that person, whoever he was, confronted me, I probably would’ve reminded him of what President Estrada said, that there are only five who are authorized: President, Vice President, Senate President, Speaker, and the Chief Justice. And I would’ve asked him which one of the five roles was he playing,” he said in a post-Rappler Talk interview in his Times Street home on July 18, 2017 – a year and 18 days after he stepped down from the presidency.
