She is the bully

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

She is the bully
Sunday, 10 02, 2005

On a morning while I was on my way to court, I switched on the radio to Ted Failon’s program and found myself endlessly amused with a repeated replay of that lady’s plaint: “I am tired of chasing the bully around the school yard!” This was followed by a rhetorical question asked, for effect, to the assembled barangay captains (bussed in from everywhere) from whom she neither expected or required a truthful answer: “Rule of law ang paiiralin natin, di ba?”

That noise barrage - for what else could it be? - made my day. But later on, somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind a bell started to ring. And I asked myself: what am I hearing from her this time? The rhetorical question about the rule of law was of course a platitude - it was pointless, unoriginal and empty, considering how she has impudently spindled and mutilated the rule of law from Edsa II down to the present. Coming from the lady, that was nothing new. What rankled in my mind was the bully thing. Suddenly, a realization flashed in my mind: syntax! The lady, this time, is not guilty of a lapse in judgment, but of a lapse in syntax!

One does not chase a bully around, unless one is a pushover for pain. It is the bully that does the chasing. Any runt who has been slapped around by the bully, and comes to a point to realize that he has had enough, would express it better: “I am tired of being chased by the bully …”

But then, the country has been so inured of the lady’s style of saying one thing but meaning the opposite other, never mind if the metaphor is entirely misplaced if not mixed-up. It is consistent with her admission of lapse in judgment while saying sorry at the same time. That is the trouble when one tries to straighten a thing that was bent or crooked in the first place. This is the trouble when the lady tries hard to make us believe, wrong syntax notwithstanding, that she has been bullied around and reduced to a whimpering, simpering state. Pa-awa epek. But it registers poorly. Kitang-kita ang panlilinlang.

The lady is the bully in disguise, a disguise so transparent it makes us die laughing as we did when we saw her Gloria Labandera and Ate Glo personas come unglued. Everything is about image: her pathological compulsion to project a persona tailored to mesh with the gullibility of the teeming masses out there. But we are not gulled when she pretends to walk tall alongside the great leaders of the world. We know that she doesn’t know anymore whether she is coming or going. Aware of her inferior stature, she masks this inferiority with fits of aggression. Don’t bother consulting Freud, Jung, et al. Just ask Usec. Luz, Gen. Gudani, and Col. Balutan. Theirs was not to reason why, but simply to do or die. Expect more terminations or transfers of government and military officers. After all, we are haughtily told that the lady is under no compulsion to offer us any explanations.

This latest Gloria persona should send shivers down our spine. Through Executive Order No. 464 and the so-called “calibrated preemptive response,” the lady has gone on an unwarranted offensive, suppressing rallies, and punishing government officials who, in standing up for honesty and integrity, are perceived by her as having embarrassed or turned against her.

It is an axiom that a government must protect itself, but this offensive is pushing the self-defense mechanism to the limits. It is a camouflage to the extreme anxiety over her standing among the citizens she has sworn to govern. It is a panic reaction to public disgust and unease that daily continues to crest and batter the gates of the Palace. The lady knows she did not win, so she says she won big over her rivals; she knows the economy is in the pits, so she says let us protect the gains and let no one disrupt economic activity anywhere; she knows corruption abounds everywhere, so she says do not testify in the hearing on this or that billion-peso project so the world will know everything is all right in the Philippines; she knows 84 million Filipinos want her no more, so she says don’t spill out into the streets so the world will believe she still has a firm grip on the reins of government.

It’s all lies, lies, lies, and lies.

Amid the lies and the deceit and the intimidation, we have to thank the god that Gloria has appropriated many a time as working on her side. He has blessed us with a presidential spokesman who tells us that his boss, the bully, has confirmed her own opinion of herself, and that we should turn no more to Jojo Binay in Makati or to the group of Rolex Suplico at the House in the exercise of legitimate dissent, and that us citizens stop altogether, and heed the bishops’ call for sobriety. Ahh! The bishops - they, too, have been bought with money from the jueteng lords and have turned a deaf ear to the words of the Lord.

It has been said that God writes straight in crooked lines; it takes us quite a while to figure out His intentions. I could only pray, without blaspheming myself, that it is one of His intentions to send us Usec. Luz, Gen. Gudani, Col. Balutan and, lately, Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo for facing off the real bully. Surely in the following days, others like them will realize that continued obeisance to Gloria will only make them an accomplice to her continuing crimes. They will take a stand - before they are made to stand alone, as poster boys for officials who obstinately refuse to lick ass and prostrate themselves to the personal, political and financial ambitions of the bully and her allies.

Beware the bully!


For comments about this website:Webmaster@tribune.net.ph

The Daily Tribune © 2005