E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
Imposing freedom to make ‘peace’
Sunday, 02 06, 2005
There is a big risk one always takes whenever a choice has to be made between age and youth as a qualification in the appointment of a government functionary. The seniority that comes with age bespeaks of experience: knowledge and skill gained through being involved in a particular job over a considerable period of time. But an unhappy and discouraging companion of seniority, as we have all too often seen in the Philippine bureaucracy, is the filth that goes with the years of easy familiarity in the labyrinths of power.
A preference for youth sometimes become imperative. After all, youthfulness evokes a fresh face, unsullied innocence if you will. But on the downside, the face of innocence sometimes conceals a pitiful lack of experience that results in a failure to discern the harm done to other people or, worse, an ignorance of the consequences of an act or remark. A choice for youth comes with a caveat: Youth is a wonderful thing; what a pity that it is wasted on the young. And what a pity that the Arroyo Administration has put its bet on the young Secretary Mike Defensor to lead the crusade in protecting the environment. Hardly had Defensor warmed his seat in the Cabinet when he put his foot in his mouth without first engaging the right lobe of his brain. With guns blazing he played it up to the gallery and branded an honorable member of the Senate of the Republic as lying through her teeth in her pronouncements on environmental issues.
This young man had to eat crow when Sen. Jamby Madrigal lashed back at him and exposed his reckless impudence and ignorance about his accusation that the senator and her family have contributed to the environmental degradation because of their involvement in logging and mining. Hardly had the spit of Defensor dried on the face of his grievously maligned target when the gung-ho Defensor, half-hearted apologies notwithstanding, found himself facing a P100 million libel suit from the outraged senator.
Years ago this young man managed to turn himself into a media celebrity of sorts when he was (rightly or wrongly) projected to be an advocate for the human rights of some young women who go by the polite euphemistic appellation of GRO. These working girls, hassled by the Quezon City police for vagrancy (another euphemism for you-know-what) were reported then to be name-dropping Defensor’s to the faces of the apprehending police officers. He emerged with his repute intact from that one. But he should have already learned his lessons well: it is not right to destroy reputations via the media.
If he were around, the malapropism-spouting Sam Goldwyn would have cautioned Defensor: “You are always taking the bull between your teeth.”
This young man showed his exuberant derring-do when he sprang Udong Mahusay during the heat of the Jose Pidal hearings at the Senate. Using helicopters and the right complement of Malacañang guards, Defensor either “rescued” or “abducted” Mahusay, and the latter was to recant everything he had spilled against Jose Pidal. Defensor earned medals there from his patron.
He was to move on, during the May 2004 elections, as spokesman for the now-presumptive president. While largely unconvincing in his defense of his patron regarding the allegations of fraud and chicanery that surrounded her campaign, he nonetheless was given credit for the effective manipulation of media to project the complete reverse of everything dubious, shameful and shameless committed during the elections. But, of course, he had the money for it - and that is another story.
It is said that it is typically the most sensitive and intelligent of the young who become revolutionaries, destroyers. Perhaps we have seen the truth of that claim in the person of Defensor. In a display of arrogance, this supposedly “sensitive and intelligent” young man was to be seen all the time on TV, heard on the radio, and quoted in print media, belittling the standard bearer of the Opposition, or playing up the shenanigans that the entrenched powers made up themselves but which they attributed to the Opposition, as in the break-in to a lawyer’s office where vital evidence were carted away. Defensor held his luck there.
Oh, the young man dearly loves to go after crooks - especially when the cameras start grinding.
Two days after the tragedy in Aurora and Quezon wrought by Typhoon “Rosing,” Defensor seized the opportunity as another live, onscreen documentary of his excessive vitality to earn brownie points. Complete with video coverage, he and his merry band of environmental rangers had tracked down a truck loaded with illegally cut logs originating from Mauban. The vehicle was monitored from Quezon, until it reached the South Luzon Expressway (Slex), where in a flash the vehicle magically disappeared from the TV screen of thrilled viewers. Defensor had let his quarry slip away! So what happened to the helicopters used in the infamous Mahusay snatch? Or to his high-end cellphone, which he could have used to call ahead and have law officers apprehend the vehicle at any point between Quezon and the Slex? But then that would be sharing the glory, and our young man would not countenance such an eventuality. Was it a case of youth being overcome by the wily and experienced illegal loggers? Or, was it a case of the raider really catching up with another kind of raider, with both of them now speaking the same kindred language?
Now Defensor picked a fight with a senator. She and her family are on the warpath to protect their family’s reputation. And rightly so.
Defensor is in a position of power. He should be more circumspect. He is also young, so he could always claim that youth is a malady of which one becomes cured little by little with the passing of days. It is hoped that the libel case will be part of that cure. Let’s see how Defensor wiggle himself out of this.
What does one call someone who is too young yet presumes to act as if he has been there long enough to lecture on his elders? Some call him a juvenile. Others may be more charitable and call him a delinquent. Defensor is both.
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