For two of the most controversial bills pending before Congress, utilizing legitimate and perhaps even clandestine channels to pander to partisan interests, there is one person who appears to be trashing sacred institutions established with great effort by the late Corazon Aquino. Plainly partisan, what shallow objectives are pursued are neither patriotic nor pro-poor where these risk violating constitutional principles protecting life, the family, peace and order, suffrage and democracy.

They are simultaneously ironic, tragic and even heart-breaking. Not only are these insidious assaults on the memory and legacy of the late president we loved dearly, but the institutions Cory fought to sustain are being deliberately desecrated and undermined by that one person who would not be wielding such power had it not been for her death.

Riding on the back of quickly dissipating satisfaction statistics, there is a creeping realization even among Benigno Aquino III’s ardent supporters that he may not be cut from the same cloth his iconic parents were.

Ninoy Aquino was brilliant and driven. He was no one’s puppet. He was a leader and he inspired. He had a profound sense of history and the role he needed to play as dictatorship unraveled and a void was imminent.

Cory Aquino was deeply devout, prayerful and loved the Catholic Church from which she drew guidance and amazing inner strength. Such guidance, plus a sensitivity for others and her own self-awareness, made Cory keenly conscious of her responsibilities in restoring the democracy her predecessor had destroyed with greed and autocracy.

We evoke these specific characteristics deliberately.

In one arena, in exchange for a US$ 434 million foreign grant signed by Aquino’s controversial Finance secretary, Benigno Aquino III conducts a confounding confrontation against the Catholic Church – a war many doubt Cory would have waged.

In another arena, where democracy had long been suppressed by violence, Cory took one of the boldest steps in establishing representative government as a foundation for peace and democracy. She signed into law the organic charter of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) - a historic statute authored by former Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr., himself the father of the ARMM Law and the Local Government Code.

Unfortunately, as Benigno Aquino III threatens with charges of sedition Catholic bishops who’ve called for the same civil disobedience to an immoral autocracy Corazon Aquino once rallied, he is simultaneously hell-bent on imposing a partisan-sponsored autocracy in the same ARMM his mother established, albeit the son’s presidential whisperers conspire to control.

The plot to manipulate, muzzle and deny ARMM’s sovereignty and replace its forthcoming August exercise of suffrage with the autocratic installation of appointees was spawned by the Akbayan Part List and fully-supported by Aquino’s Liberal Party.

Under House Bill (HB) 4146 initially authored by Akbayan, sooner than grant the ARMM the autonomy to choose its leaders, the bill proposes the appointment of the un-elected and constitutionally unauthorized to run the ARMM until the national elections in 2013. The ploy is plainly autocratic, definitively undemocratic, signifying distrust in Mindanaoans, and blatantly unconstitutional.

Rather than trust in democracy as Cory had done in granting Muslim Mindanao autonomy, the plan peddled in the Senate resurrects autocracy’s darkest undersides by denying suffrage and installing products of whim and whispers. Not only does the ploy desecrate the democratic legacy sewn into the fibers of the ARMM’s organic act but the gambit Malacanang pursues recklessly exposes the presidency to violations of the constitution.

The constitution is clear. It vests in the president only general supervisory powers over the ARMM. That does not include the power to appoint Officers-in-Charge.

Neither subsequent laws passed nor presidential overtures can violate the constitution and deny suffrage. And yet HB 4146, declared urgent by Malacanang, brazenly stipulates “the President of the Republic of the Philippines shall appoint officers-in-charge who will take over the functions of the incumbent elective officials of the ARMM at the end of their term on noon of the thirtieth (30th) day of September 2011.”

On the pretext of synchronization, the president effectively denigrates Muslim Mindanao and muzzles its will. It is obvious entities worming behind the woodwork fear that their unpreparedness for the August ARMM polls will compromise their pursuit of power. Unfortunately, Aquino’s bench is shallow. Failing to attract “winnables” and inspire a better breed to join the government, government resorts to appointing losers.

But by imposing the unconstitutional and undemocratic to compensate for these shortcomings, Aquino risks desecrating the legacy of his parents.

He must respect their memories and the constitution he swore to uphold. He must cut the puppeteer’s strings, free himself from parasitic dependence and reestablish his ideological umbilical with his mother who risked her life to restore democracy, and his father who died violently under a similar autocracy insidiously infested with worms and whisperers.