E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
Nootropics
Sunday, 02 11, 2007
In the next four months, the election fever will rise to such pitch that would prompt observers not familiar with our brand of politics to wonder whether the anticipated global warming has come a bit too soon. As it builds to a climax in May, this state of intense excitement will not only be confined among the candidates but among the voters as well.
Indeed, we have seen how a seemingly casual discussion regarding the merits of one candidate over another has turned neighbor against neighbor, son against father, spouses against their respective in-laws, etcetera. This enmity goes on even long after the elections are over, and revived when the next election comes around. Never mind if the subject of the feud — the candidate himself — has turned out to be a no-goodnik after all. Beyond all reason, it seems that the voting preferences of many have to be anchored on the outward “glamor” attached to the candidate, if nothing else.
One might ask, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that what elections are all about — the freedom to choose? Yes, definitely! But when the choice turns out to be wrong, do we have to make the same choice the second time around?
At the risk of being labeled as a “nattering nabob of negativism,” (thank you for this, William Safire) I venture to say what we need in the next four months is a nootropic. Yes, I know — the term is out of nowhere, so let me explain. Simply defined, nootropic is a drug used to enhance memory and discernment.
We need to administer a nootropic to dispel the national amnesia that has caused us to forget the sins of those who have trespassed the laws of human decency. We need a nootropic to bring back to memory those who cheated their way to government. We need a nootropic also to help us discern between form and substance among today’s array of candidates who either out of convenience or principle have chosen to align themselves with one camp or another.
We need a nootropic, for instance, to refresh in our collective memory how in 2004 lawyer Ed Escueta, myself, and the other counsel of Fernando Poe, Jr. were shouting back at the members of the Canvassing Committee of the Congress of the Philippines, who refused all importunings to go to the elections returns and compare them with the certificates of canvass.
We need a memory drug to bring to mind once more the sight of the head of the committee, Sen. Francisco Pangilinan, banging his gavel — not once, not twice, but countless times as if on a video gone awry on a loop — at the same time shouting “Noted!” “Noted!” “Noted!” until the gavel broke at the handle by the sheer intensity of his determined haste to drown out our objections, and put the proceedings on a track that led to an indecent dawn proclamation of then presidential candidate Gloria Arroyo.
We need a nootropic to replay in our minds the spectacle of Pangilinan holding on to a broken gavel, grinning like a Cheshire cat, a grin that not so much masked his embarrassment as betrayed his shameless and shameful deviousness. Was he being exposed in public by some unseen god that his job was indeed despicable, so his symbol of authority just had to be broken?
Up to that convenient time that the Liberal Party broke away from Arroyo in 2005, Pangilinan was very much a part of the machinery for cover-up of the many anomalies in the Arroyo government. And even after that breakaway, his limp and unconvincing voice has not been heard of. There is not a drop of opposition blood in his veins; rather, the blood of the opposition drips heavily from his hands.
One still recalls how he maneuvered to have the report of Sen. Edgardo Angara’s committee — finding Ricardo Manapat guilty of depriving FPJ of his (natural-born) Filipino citizenship — trashed by a Senate packed with apologists of Arroyo. (The same pack of apologists is now knocking at the door of the opposition to be included in its Senate slate).
Now, Pangilinan is seeking reelection, not under the ticket of the government he helped install into power and coddled, but with the opposition he has been treating with contempt. So who could blame opposition torch-bearers such as Linggoy Alcuaz and Rez Cortez if they object to Pangilinan’s inclusion in the opposition slate?
Sen. Kit Tatad might as well have been alluding to Pangilinan when he derided those who want to ride the opposition bandwagon — who supported Arroyo in 2004 and now want to be in the opposition — because it is no longer profitable to be identified with Arroyo. Paraphrasing Tatad further: Pangilinan is one impudent gambler who wants to collect on every throw of the dice even after he has lost the game, a case of plain and simple crass opportunism.
We need a nootropic to replay that television show where he made an admission against interest, telling his wife: “I would not be what I am today were it not for you.” Or some such words. Indeed, Pangilinan once performed miserably in some local election. He then got married to a very popular movie star. That was his passport to the Senate in 2001, to join what Tatad aptly describes as the parade of celebrities and popular incompetents.
As long as we cannot remember the past trespasses of Pangilinan — and the incompetence of others like him — because it is being continually altered or glamorized, we will have no control over the present, neither over the future. And if we vote just because we put too much credence on the images in the crystal ball of the surveys, we will wind up eating and choking up on shards of broken glass for the rest of our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment