Mar’s beau geste

by J. S. Ong
from Philippine Daily Inquirer

One predawn hour, I got up for my second pee of the night, then found myself unable to sleep again. Nothing unusual about that; I take diuretics for diabetes and other infirmities of old age, so most nights my sleep is interrupted by a quick trip to the john. If I get up close to wake-up time, sleep becomes elusive.

But something else stirred me awake that Wednesday—Mar Roxas’ stunning announcement the day before that he was ending his bid for the presidency, and giving way to Noynoy Aquino.

This was unexpected. A day earlier, I had told a friend I was willing to vote for a Mar-Noynoy, or a Noynoy-Mar, ticket; but I thought the Liberal Party would first go through a bruising selection process, Mar counting on the regulars he’d been cultivating for years, Noynoy being pushed forward by an external and more energetic groundswell, neither side willing to back down, until the party elders and moneybags hammered out a deal in a smoke-filled room.

But here was something so not in the script, in the way that Tita Cory’s funeral sendoff was so not in the script. Gabby Claudio’s bravado reaction—“an interesting twist that will complicate matters for the opposition”—was cheerful but clueless. Mar’s decision embodies idealism, selflessness, long-term thinking and recognition of the deeper yearnings of the public—qualities unfathomable to and absent in Malacañang today.

It will take a while for Malacañang’s denizens to grasp what is happening and what will happen next, infatuated and hardened as they are by the frenetic pursuit of tactical advantage; and for whom, all there is to political life is politics itself, all there is to governing is the thrill of rule. All they can see, all they can fall back on, are the tricks of the trade—the timely interception at the airport, the recourse to cash-filled envelopes, the invocation of executive privilege, the vicious treatment of whistle-blowers, the supercilious dismissal of approval ratings.

Claudio is only partly right. Mar’s beau geste will complicate matters for the opposition, but the complication will be happy, because forces will start to coalesce. At the very least, three putative candidates can no longer claim to be handpicked by heaven by virtue of direct lines to God. Noynoy and Mar are not saints, but in this milieu, being unsullied will suffice.

Mar’s graciousness will also complicate matters for the party in power, but more dangerously. The forced marriage of Lakas and Kampi was flawed and fractious to begin with; now the ship of state will begin to look like a leaky and overloaded ferryboat in a gathering storm, with some deck officers racing for lifeboats ahead of the crew. Noynoy and Mar will have to be particularly wary of those operators who even now may be making overtures, and arguing, with compelling evidence, that they have been useful to previous Palace occupants; and, given the chance and for the right price, can be so once again.

Finally, Mar and Noynoy will also complicate matters for people of my generation, whose memories of the last quarter century have left us skeptical and weary. We threw out Marcos, and saw our hopes frustrated because Marcos left a legacy of militarists with a taste for power and a fascination with force. As putschists, they were pathetic failures, but they stymied and wasted Cory Aquino’s years as president. One day we looked up and the Marcos cronies were back. One day we threw out Erap, and ended up with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Now we must ponder on Mar and Noynoy, and ask ourselves what we in turn must be ready to give, or give up, and if we have what it takes.

Forty years ago James Reston of the New York Times told my graduate mass com class that all one needed in his line of work was a sturdy pair of legs (a reporter walks a lot) and a strong bladder (a reporter listens to long speeches). Well, 40 years ago, as a sometime campus militant who helped occupy an applied electronics lab to protest the research it was doing for the Department of Defense during the Vietnam War, I discovered, when the police came and chased us out, that I could outrun any cop in California. Now my cardiologist warns me to pause between floors when I walk up to my office. As for bladder strength, now I can’t sleep through the night without getting up to pee.

So what can I bring to bear on the coming struggle? Whatever I can, I suppose, for as long as I can. E-mail friends, connect class lectures to contemporary issues, renew old fellowships. But the fervor doesn’t burn as strong any more. I feel more like Don Quixote’s broken-down nag Rozinante, than like Don Quixote himself.

Perhaps the song associated with Ninoy, “The Impossible Dream,” is too slow-paced, almost too dirge-like, to suit the times. The dream is not impossible, and the time for dreaming is past. We might be better spurred to action by the musical’s title song: “Man of La Mancha” has a livelier tempo, and its opening lyrics might better capture the faith and hope we will need in the days and years to come:

Hear me now, o thou bleak and unbearable world:

Thou art base and debauched as can be;

And a knight, with his banners all bravely unfurled,

Now hurls down his gauntlet to thee!

(J. S. Ong was senior editor at the Philippines Herald before martial law and currently teaches marketing and literature at De La Salle University.)