E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
Suplico, the provocateur
Sunday, 09 11, 2005
When Congressman Rolex Tupas Suplico of Iloilo was yet my student in the U.P. College of Law, he exhibited a knack for stirring up a hornet’s nest during class discussions. In one meeting in my criminal procedure class, I caught him rattling off an obviously wrong answer to a question I posed, and I commented tongue-in-cheek that his answer was excellent. Of course the whole class reacted in outraged dismay, and howled that I was exercising favoritism because Suplico was my fraternity brother. And as if to gang up on me, the rest of the class came up with the right answers - and they were, this time, truly and rightly, excellent. Later, as if mollified, I told the class that Suplico, as far as I was concerned, was excellent in his hallucination and, for that, at least he deserved a citation. Smarting from my broadside, Suplico sheepishly blurted: “Sir, I just wanted to provoke this thing and see how they would react.”
Many years later out of law school, Suplico still manages to provoke people into righteous indignation. But this time the issues that he raises do not spring out of mere hallucination, but out of a deep concern to set things right. After serving as a provincial board member of Iloilo, he has since become one of our more colorful members of the House of Representatives. At the House, Suplico has become the resident provocateur, sparking up debates in the House with the issues he has ignited: Garcia and the GSIS anomalies, legalization of jueteng, the misuse of the road users’ tax and, lately, his endorsement of the Lozano complaint in the impeachment against Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo.
But then, Suplico does not raise issues out of sheer orneriness and delight at seeing someone rendered uncomfortable. Sometime in the past he had even prudently called on members of the Opposition to hold their tongues in pointing to the members of the First Family as on the take in the jueteng payolas, pending the investigations. This show of grace and decency did not sit well with some of his more bellicose colleagues who shared his side of the political fence, but it did earn him some points of grudging respect from the Palace.
Suplico’s magnanimous gesture toward a perceived political adversary prompted observers to speculate how much longer he would be able to hold on to his committee seats in the Opposition before they are taken away from him out for having, it would seem, jumped to the other side. Some even sniggered that he has wisely learned to dance the political cha-cha (three steps and a swaying shuffle) with his erstwhile enemies.
Suplico, if there ever was one in the House, is one congressman who would not dance to the music of Malacañang. It’s not just his style to breezily glide into accusatory condemnation and then execute a contrite about-face shuffle. He just wanted to be fair. As was his wont during his law school days, perhaps he wanted to provoke the Opposition into some soul searching so it could identify those who really belong to them and ferret out the rats who are outwardly card-carrying members of the Opposition but are really closet administration lackeys.
The provocateur, somehow, stirred a response among his colleagues - silence from some; voiced acceptance from others; and, not unexpectedly, a critical harangue from two congressmen. Those who were silent must have agreed with Suplico. Those who charged him for having gone over to Malacañang obviously spoke for the Palace, with the intent of discrediting him and thus neutralizing his credibility.
Then came the impeachment debates, a spectacle which kept most of us glued to our TV sets, with a good number of congressmen dozing in their seats while the rest tyrannized the truth through sheer predominance. In that political circus with a foregone finale, we saw Suplico, caught by the camera in slow motion, flinging into the air his capacious bundle of impeachment papers, provoking a walk-out of the Opposition. It was an eloquent act of frustration over the onslaught of the Majority.
The colorful Suplico has endeared himself to the public with his one-liners (Ano ba! Gagohan na ba ito?). This sassy, in-your-face belligerence is perhaps what his more articulate colleagues in the Opposition lacked during the impeachment debates. The creeping numbers (six voters short, would you believe?) was too contrived and could not be taken seriously; it only exposed the serious lack of numbers to reach the requisite 79 one week to voting day. I wonder: Could Suplico, had he been given the role of drumbeater, have confused the enemy and drummed up the numbers? But that is past and gone.
What is here and now is the realization that the Opposition has a gem in its ranks, and he should be given a chance to shine. Save for Suplico, nobody else has come out to blow away the smokescreen that Joey Salceda has laid with his claim that the Iglesia ni Cristo was behind the campaign to get the numbers to beat 79 in the impeachment case. That was one weak and unfounded claim, deserving a forceful slap on the limp wrist of the messenger. Suplico could not just stand by and allow the ruse to succeed. Berating Salceda, he told the congressman from Bicol that he should stop using the influential religious group as scapegoat for the widespread buy-and-sell of “yes” votes that the Palace did.
The People’s Court is about to be convened. And as in that ritual on the Jewish Day of Atonement, where the high priest symbolically loads on a scapegoat all the sins of the community before sending the animal out into the wilderness, we can expect Suplico to heap a great big load on the rightful goat, before it is dragged out by the people and sent out into the empty and barren wasteland of political disgrace.
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