Political Showmanship

This piece was published in the Palladium on January of last year. I still find it relevant in light of Edsa 2006. "Edsa 1 is a failure," said Imee Marcos. So it seems.


While the overwhelming number of common folk mourned Fernando Poe Jr. outside Sto. Domingo church, the Arroyo administration was displaying paranoia within the Palace walls. It called upon the Armed Forces, which the President exhorted to side with her in the face of an enemy that is more imagined than real. It relied on intelligence reports, which could basically be just mere talk and was unfairly, although conveniently, imputed upon the Reds. It prophesied a looming sedition, when there is only collective grief for the death of a philanthropist and a movie icon. Indeed, the Arroyo administration should be ashamed for acting the way it did despite an alleged million-vote lead last May which clinched her the presidency. As Randy David wrote, because of its own duplicity, this government has become fearful of its citizens.

If this government fears that a mob will cause its collapse, it is sadly mistaken. For one, it will predictably behave the way it did during Edsa III, that is, turn a deaf ear and call on the police to hose down the fans. Also, its fall will not be due to the tired masses but due to its own corruption and incompetence. If there is anything the majority of our kababayans have learned by now, it is that the government has ears for those which it wants to hear and willing hands for things which it can use to boost its popularity ratings. Perhaps, muddling up morality with popularity is one of the misused things that politics have grafted from showbiz. Street parliamentary is losing its touch where our politics with selective senses is concerned. No wonder people turn to movies and to make-believe, where we see heroes and projections of the good, things we all so dearly crave to experience in real life. We turn to our nations’ leaders and we see the opposite of heroes. We now rarely have leaders who make lives better with the powers we have vested in them. We are a nation bereft of heroes. We are shown empty drug laboratories without even a security guard much less any operators or owners caught. We hear of huge amounts of foreign aid for the rehabilitation of typhoon victims and that’s the end of it. We are made to listen to every strategic raid or buy-bust operations, to every fiscal adequacy plan, to the hundreds of suspects added to the growing list, but never to kindness, generosity, and humility. Surely the citizenry is not dumb enough not to realize that power imaging is not the only thing that makes us go “wow” and cooperate. Showbiz is made of glittering personalities but our politics need not be peppered with politicians acting like that, too. Government shouldn’t be for show. That will be depreciating politics again beyond imaginable depth. It should be about getting things done, reforming it and increasing its value.
The administration can sure learn to apply a lot of things from the death of an icon who, although he lacked the elitist polish that the privileged few were looking for, not only had the heart to serve but was able to make better lives of his people in reel and real life. Had the government just kept quiet instead of placing tanks and soldiers from Quezon Blvd. to the North Cemetery, it would also have saved us some million pesos, which was allotted out of the blue in case of a rebelLion. Since there was none, it went to the pockets of these soldiers as a health bonus. Many thanks for guarding us against nothing.