Mysterious ways
Mysterious ways
Updated 10:19pm (Mla time) Nov 15, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the November 15, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
I WAS one of those who read about Faye Nicole San Juan in the Internet and was moved by her experience. The article I read compared the fate that befell her with the triumphant visit of Jasmine Trias to this country. Trias, the article said, was feted right and left for landing a place in the "American Idol" contest while San Juan was ignored right and left despite her far more remarkable accomplishments. Those accomplishments included winning first prize in the Intercontinental Science Quiz Net in Australia in September last year and earlier landing among the top five in the Mathematics for Young Asians competition in Indonesia.
Other articles recalled San Juan's ordeal in more detail. Apparently, she and her mother, Cathy, were swindled by a fellow Filipino when they got to Brisbane, and the older San Juan had to pawn some of her belongings to get them to the competition site. Even then, they had to walk a couple of kilometers in the end. Apparently, too, Faye got no support from the Department of Science and Technology (DoST) despite qualifying for the competition and no help from the Philippine Embassy in Canberra during their trying times. As a result, they sought help from the Japanese Embassy, which turned them down.
Their story took off with their church, the Bread of Life Ministries, backing it up and asking government and country to give San Juan her due. I myself was ready to give it. I agreed completely with the article I read earlier complaining about our warped sense of priorities, giving more importance to entertainment than to education, to glitter than to learning.
Alas, as it turned out, it was an elaborate hoax, as elaborate as the anti-Filipino remarks attributed to Art Bell that circulated in the Internet and got the goat of many Filipinos. The Bread of Life Ministries has "determined that the story is not true" and said it would issue a public apology soon. It attributed the hoax to the wild imaginings of Cathy San Juan. "Our heart goes out to a child like Faye whose mother has deep emotional problems."
The Australian Embassy will not confirm whether it issued a visa or not to the San Juans, saying visas are confidential, it does not give out information on that matter. But the Bureau of Immigration says it has no record of either Faye or Cathy leaving the country at anytime from September to December last year. The Japanese Embassy as well denies it received any request for help from the San Juans. So barring a dramatic twist, that's pretty much end of story, at least as far as its veracity goes.
But it remains an ongoing one for me at least in other respects. I can imagine why the DoST and the Department of Foreign Affairs should bristle at the suggestion they did nothing to help the deserving. It is a sensitive point, quite apart from being an unfair charge. With this government resolutely showing a warped sense of priorities (its most recent one is Pag-IBIG Fund's issuance of its largest loan to date to Mike Velarde, in aid of producing condo units), while all its other contributors have to fall in line for a paltry one, government agencies can ill-afford more patent demonstrations of it. Its officials certainly cannot afford so, this government too having a predilection for sacrificing lambs to draw attention away from the vultures in Malacañang.
But this notwithstanding, I can't find myself tremendously oppressed by what Cathy San Juan has done. This is not to encourage people to mount deceptions of any kind, whatever their intentions. But San Juan's delusions at least have the saving grace of originating from noteworthy aspirations. At the heart of them lies a desire for her daughter to rise to heights of academic accomplishment, or to be perceived by the public as having done so. Cathy did not dream of, or manufacture a story, about her daughter having outdone Jasmine Trias and won in a bigger singing contest somewhere in the world. She dreamed of, and manufactured a story about, her daughter winning a contest in science and math somewhere in the world.
Maybe she deserves therapy, or even the straitjacket. But what does that say for the rest of the country where the desperate pin their hopes of getting out of the rut by dint of fist or voice (boxing or singing) rather than by dint of science and math, book and learning?
The San Juan case is truly not unlike the Art Bell hoax. Though the latter was a hoax (the real Bell, a perfect radio host, never uttered the anti-Filipino remarks), it did in some perverse, or trick-mirror, sort of way compel us to reexamine ourselves. The things said about us in that prank -- that we lack identity or national pride, that we like to latch on to the achievements of other peoples instead of toiling to build our own -- do have a disturbing ring of truth in them.
So it is about the suggestion that this country has a warped sense of priorities, throwing ardent support behind entertainment rather than education, the banal rather than the lofty, glitter rather than gold. It more than carries a ring of truth to it, it roars deafeningly. You need not go far to see examples of it. The President herself shows it relentlessly, as when she dropped by the wake of Rico Yan, a minor movie star who managed to enthrall the nation by dying in his sleep, but failed to do the same thing at the wake of Lucio San Pedro, a National Artist who toiled all his life through music to awaken the dying Filipino spirit. What does that say about the President's sensibilities, quite apart from order of priorities?
Of course, a fabricated victory in a science and math contest abroad is not the best way to drive home the point. But we would not do badly to reflect on it. Truth, like God, works in the most mysterious ways.
Updated 10:19pm (Mla time) Nov 15, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the November 15, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
I WAS one of those who read about Faye Nicole San Juan in the Internet and was moved by her experience. The article I read compared the fate that befell her with the triumphant visit of Jasmine Trias to this country. Trias, the article said, was feted right and left for landing a place in the "American Idol" contest while San Juan was ignored right and left despite her far more remarkable accomplishments. Those accomplishments included winning first prize in the Intercontinental Science Quiz Net in Australia in September last year and earlier landing among the top five in the Mathematics for Young Asians competition in Indonesia.
Other articles recalled San Juan's ordeal in more detail. Apparently, she and her mother, Cathy, were swindled by a fellow Filipino when they got to Brisbane, and the older San Juan had to pawn some of her belongings to get them to the competition site. Even then, they had to walk a couple of kilometers in the end. Apparently, too, Faye got no support from the Department of Science and Technology (DoST) despite qualifying for the competition and no help from the Philippine Embassy in Canberra during their trying times. As a result, they sought help from the Japanese Embassy, which turned them down.
Their story took off with their church, the Bread of Life Ministries, backing it up and asking government and country to give San Juan her due. I myself was ready to give it. I agreed completely with the article I read earlier complaining about our warped sense of priorities, giving more importance to entertainment than to education, to glitter than to learning.
Alas, as it turned out, it was an elaborate hoax, as elaborate as the anti-Filipino remarks attributed to Art Bell that circulated in the Internet and got the goat of many Filipinos. The Bread of Life Ministries has "determined that the story is not true" and said it would issue a public apology soon. It attributed the hoax to the wild imaginings of Cathy San Juan. "Our heart goes out to a child like Faye whose mother has deep emotional problems."
The Australian Embassy will not confirm whether it issued a visa or not to the San Juans, saying visas are confidential, it does not give out information on that matter. But the Bureau of Immigration says it has no record of either Faye or Cathy leaving the country at anytime from September to December last year. The Japanese Embassy as well denies it received any request for help from the San Juans. So barring a dramatic twist, that's pretty much end of story, at least as far as its veracity goes.
But it remains an ongoing one for me at least in other respects. I can imagine why the DoST and the Department of Foreign Affairs should bristle at the suggestion they did nothing to help the deserving. It is a sensitive point, quite apart from being an unfair charge. With this government resolutely showing a warped sense of priorities (its most recent one is Pag-IBIG Fund's issuance of its largest loan to date to Mike Velarde, in aid of producing condo units), while all its other contributors have to fall in line for a paltry one, government agencies can ill-afford more patent demonstrations of it. Its officials certainly cannot afford so, this government too having a predilection for sacrificing lambs to draw attention away from the vultures in Malacañang.
But this notwithstanding, I can't find myself tremendously oppressed by what Cathy San Juan has done. This is not to encourage people to mount deceptions of any kind, whatever their intentions. But San Juan's delusions at least have the saving grace of originating from noteworthy aspirations. At the heart of them lies a desire for her daughter to rise to heights of academic accomplishment, or to be perceived by the public as having done so. Cathy did not dream of, or manufacture a story, about her daughter having outdone Jasmine Trias and won in a bigger singing contest somewhere in the world. She dreamed of, and manufactured a story about, her daughter winning a contest in science and math somewhere in the world.
Maybe she deserves therapy, or even the straitjacket. But what does that say for the rest of the country where the desperate pin their hopes of getting out of the rut by dint of fist or voice (boxing or singing) rather than by dint of science and math, book and learning?
The San Juan case is truly not unlike the Art Bell hoax. Though the latter was a hoax (the real Bell, a perfect radio host, never uttered the anti-Filipino remarks), it did in some perverse, or trick-mirror, sort of way compel us to reexamine ourselves. The things said about us in that prank -- that we lack identity or national pride, that we like to latch on to the achievements of other peoples instead of toiling to build our own -- do have a disturbing ring of truth in them.
So it is about the suggestion that this country has a warped sense of priorities, throwing ardent support behind entertainment rather than education, the banal rather than the lofty, glitter rather than gold. It more than carries a ring of truth to it, it roars deafeningly. You need not go far to see examples of it. The President herself shows it relentlessly, as when she dropped by the wake of Rico Yan, a minor movie star who managed to enthrall the nation by dying in his sleep, but failed to do the same thing at the wake of Lucio San Pedro, a National Artist who toiled all his life through music to awaken the dying Filipino spirit. What does that say about the President's sensibilities, quite apart from order of priorities?
Of course, a fabricated victory in a science and math contest abroad is not the best way to drive home the point. But we would not do badly to reflect on it. Truth, like God, works in the most mysterious ways.
posted by Dante at 2:30 PM
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