Bust

Theres The Rub
by Conrado de Quiros
from Philippine Daily Inquirer

YOU have to wonder if she truly means to go. People who are going normally just say goodbye in a dry or tearful way and slip into the night, like Kristie Kenney. They do not go to the trouble of milking every available government agency—such as they can still be made to yield anything after being wrung dry to put Gibo’s face on the back of buses—to do as God does, which is to create something out of nothing. Or more straightforwardly, to produce ads that proclaim the good works of one Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Even Jesus needed water to turn into wine; vinegar is pushing it.

Whatever her intentions, the effort is pathetic. It looks like a last-ditch attempt to resurrect a project GMA launched a few years ago that had all the hallmarks of the emperor’s new clothes. It took the form of posters proclaiming that masses could now deeply feel their prosperity—ramdam na ramdam na. A project that was derailed by Cory dying last year and by the sheer luminousness of her life casting GMA into the shadows. But even before Cory died, the ramdam na ramdam na campaign was already sputtering. It wasn’t merely that its message contrasted with the reality, it was also that it refuted its own message. Why do you have to hammer into people’s heads what they already know or feel deeply?

Today’s legacy pitch would be funny, except that it doesn’t tickle to be fried in your own fat. The fortune that’s being used to raise this monument to folly is our money. We already know and deeply feel her legacy. It has nothing to do with the things she trots out in Sonas, the last being exceptionally chest-thumping. If I myself were to pick out the three things that stand out in that legacy, it would be these:

First, the “I will not run” legacy. That is the mother of all iniquity. That vow made on the grave of Jose Rizal—it was Rizal Day, 2002—elevated lying into an official policy of the state. Marcos was a big-league liar too, but he was never this brazen. He never categorically promised one thing and did another. This one was in your face. After that, lying just became a reflex action of Malacañang, an aberration turned normal by repetition and the implicit challenge, “So what can you do about it?”

The “Hello Garci” fiasco merely derived from this original sin. If GMA had kept her word—or if the public had risen to make her keep her word—none of it would have happened. She would not have been able to lie more, she would not have been allowed to lie more, and she would not have been there to lie more.

Second is the Ampatuan legacy. Which is really the culture of impunity, or the culture of violence, or the culture of blood and gore, raised to the max with the Maguindanao massacre. That massacre gave whole new meanings to murder and mayhem, committed as it was with a wantonness and savagery hitherto unknown to this country. But unthinkable as it was, it was merely the culmination of something that had begun long before, which was the wholesale murder of political activists and journalists outside Metro Manila. Which in the end was far more horrifying for being clean, efficient and barely noticed.

The Maguindanao massacre defined the GMA regime. It showed a regime with blood-spattered hands, a regime that could not have existed and could not go on existing without perverse men who did perverse acts, like massacring their enemies, slaughtering activists and journalists and strangling democracy while it slept.

Third is the NBN legacy. Corruption is too poor a word to describe the ransacking of the nation’s wealth. You either have to extend the meaning of corruption to conjure something rotting, or festering, or decaying, or you have to use the more powerful local words, magnanakaw, kawatan and mga walanghiyang tao. The NBN case is classic. It wasn’t merely the theft. It was also the kidnapping of Jun Lozada, it was also the rewarding of the kidnappers and the punishment of the kidnapped, it was also the invocation of the divine right of nobles, the right to steal, as contained in the doctrine “executive privilege.” It isn’t just lying that’s kin to stealing, it’s violence, injustice and oppression too.

In the end, all GMA does with her attempt to apprise us of a legacy we do not recognize is to strike a contrast with someone who has left us a legacy we do recognize. Someone who never bothered to drum it up for the simple reason that it was ramdam na ramdam by everyone. Cory never did anything to advertise herself or her works. She did things with a quiet passion and commitment, never drawing attention to it, other than to get others to volunteer for it or give to it. When she died people began, completely unbidden other than by their consciences, and out of gratefulness, to talk about the “Cory legacy.” Indeed, when she died, people, completely undeterred by efforts to distract them, and out of a desire to give back, trooped to the streets and bore her to her final resting place to every resolve to make her legacy live on.

The only real monuments, the ones that survive the erosion of wind and rain and time, are those that are built in the heart. Noynoy was right to refuse GMA’s offer to build a monument for his mother. It wasn’t just that it came from the wrong person, though that was a humongous turnoff in itself, an effort by the offerer, who is best consigned to the bottomless pit of forgetfulness, to monumentalize herself with her offer. It was also that it was completely unnecessary. Cory was already cast in stone, larger and grander than Ed Castrillo can ever make, in the memory of the race.

GMA’s legacy, for all the ads and announcements that will proclaim it, will end up like the bust in Agoo, crying rivers of blood with only the crows to gawk at it.

That’s how the unloved go bust.