Da King is dead, long live Da King
Da King is dead, long live Da King
Updated 03:03am (Mla time) Dec 16, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the December 16, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I HEARD about it last Sunday from a friend. Fernando Poe Jr. keeled over the night before and was rushed to St. Luke's. His condition was critical. While at the hospital, he had a seizure and went into a coma. By nightfall, he was on life support. It was just a question of when they would pull the plug.
This is a horrible year. At about the same time last Monday, our friend William Chua, a human rights lawyer and a partner in Haydee Yorac's law firm, also died. His death was not as sudden as FPJ's, but it was sudden by most other standards. He had a check-up early this year after feeling out of sorts, and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at a fairly advanced stage. He was given months to live. He died a couple of hours earlier than FPJ. He was 48.
But I'll put off my elegy for William and look at FPJ first. There is no small irony in FPJ going ahead of his buddy, Joseph Estrada. I remember writing several columns in jest before the 1998 elections saying the best position to run for was vice president. That was so, I said, because given Joseph Estrada's state of health and his propensity to ruin it some more by drink and lechon (I don't know if sleeping around ruins or improves health), I wasn't sure he would finish his term.
Little did I realize how true that would be, though for quite different reasons. Estrada would truly not finish his term, but not for failing health. Even less did I realize the vice president would take his place, only to proceed to ruin the health of her country.
But the bigger irony is that during the last elections people worried not over FPJ's health but over Raul Roco's. Roco had to fly to the United States in the thick of the campaign to seek emergency treatment for a recurrence of prostate cancer. I saw him last Saturday at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani, and he couldn't have been healthier or more energetic. He radiated amiability and good cheer.
In any case, I've never thought voting on the basis of a person's health was a wise thing to do. You want to vote wisely, vote on the basis of a person's mental and moral health, not his physical one. A good leader who serves for a short time is always preferable to a bad leader who serves for a long time. The first is bliss, the second is hell.
I don't know that I would have liked to have FPJ as my president. But I do know he was not the greater evil and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the lesser one in the elections, which is how GMA sold herself. If the choice were merely between Arroyo and FPJ (and it was never so), I'd pick FPJ anytime. A person with a good heart who means well, however he doesn't know the first thing about government, is infinitely better than a person with a good head who means ill, however she sandpapers things with PR. Intelligence is not a boon to the nation if it resides in the head of a hustler. It is a bane to it.
I already said my piece there during the campaign, and it is to FPJ's credit that he never took the things I said against him against me. On the one occasion I spoke to him before the elections, he never brought it up. He only thanked me for saying that when I was a kid I thrilled to see him play Daniel Barrion in the movies. He didn't know too many people who still remembered Daniel Barrion, much less saw his movies about Daniel Barrion. Most people remembered only Asedillo and Ang Panday. He spoke softly, much as he did in his movies, before the thugs pushed him to the wall and he defended himself with fast gun and flying fists. He was a gracious man, a monumental virtue in these ungracious times.
In any case, none of our objections to his presidential bid may allow us to slip FPJ surreptitiously into the footnotes of history, as a cultural icon that made the mistake of plunging into politics in the twilight of his career. I say this in particular because I've heard a number of people say, "Buti na lang, FPJ didn't become president or else we would now have Noli de Castro, or worse, Loren Legarda, for president!"
Well, maybe that would be a worse pass, but that doesn't excuse the silence of the Edsa I and II forces, notably civil society, in the face of Arroyo bankrupting government to campaign. That doesn't excuse the silence of the Edsa I and II forces, notably civil society, in the face of the statistical improbability that was the Cebu results. That doesn't excuse the silence of the Edsa I and II forces, notably civil society, in the face of the blatant efforts of the Commission on Elections and Congress to substitute their will for that of the voting public.
And all this presumably to prevent the "greater evil" from becoming president. That succeeded only in assuring the greater evil truly would. A greater evil that includes the Edsa I and II forces, including civil society, conspiring to thwart the sovereign will. I don't know that FPJ, and not Arroyo, won the elections. I do know the process was raped thoroughly. I cannot fault the majority of Filipinos who, if Ibon and SWS are to be believed, are convinced the wrong president sits in Malacañang. I was not one of those who wanted FPJ to be president, but that is neither here nor there. How the people actually voted is the only thing that matters. That is what elections are for. That is what democracy is for.
What irony that FPJ should be felled at the very time he was buckling down for a long fight for recognition as the rightful tenant of the house by the Pasig. I'm glad at least his supporters are determined to pick up the cudgels for him. Meanwhile, I grieve with the rest of them and go to bury a president.
The King is dead, long live Da King.
* * *
Just a reminder: Our benefit for the victims of the storms is on Dec. 20 at Conspiracy Café along Visayas Avenue. We'll start early, at 8 p.m., nang makarami. Eight to sawa, of course.
Updated 03:03am (Mla time) Dec 16, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the December 16, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I HEARD about it last Sunday from a friend. Fernando Poe Jr. keeled over the night before and was rushed to St. Luke's. His condition was critical. While at the hospital, he had a seizure and went into a coma. By nightfall, he was on life support. It was just a question of when they would pull the plug.
This is a horrible year. At about the same time last Monday, our friend William Chua, a human rights lawyer and a partner in Haydee Yorac's law firm, also died. His death was not as sudden as FPJ's, but it was sudden by most other standards. He had a check-up early this year after feeling out of sorts, and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at a fairly advanced stage. He was given months to live. He died a couple of hours earlier than FPJ. He was 48.
But I'll put off my elegy for William and look at FPJ first. There is no small irony in FPJ going ahead of his buddy, Joseph Estrada. I remember writing several columns in jest before the 1998 elections saying the best position to run for was vice president. That was so, I said, because given Joseph Estrada's state of health and his propensity to ruin it some more by drink and lechon (I don't know if sleeping around ruins or improves health), I wasn't sure he would finish his term.
Little did I realize how true that would be, though for quite different reasons. Estrada would truly not finish his term, but not for failing health. Even less did I realize the vice president would take his place, only to proceed to ruin the health of her country.
But the bigger irony is that during the last elections people worried not over FPJ's health but over Raul Roco's. Roco had to fly to the United States in the thick of the campaign to seek emergency treatment for a recurrence of prostate cancer. I saw him last Saturday at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani, and he couldn't have been healthier or more energetic. He radiated amiability and good cheer.
In any case, I've never thought voting on the basis of a person's health was a wise thing to do. You want to vote wisely, vote on the basis of a person's mental and moral health, not his physical one. A good leader who serves for a short time is always preferable to a bad leader who serves for a long time. The first is bliss, the second is hell.
I don't know that I would have liked to have FPJ as my president. But I do know he was not the greater evil and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the lesser one in the elections, which is how GMA sold herself. If the choice were merely between Arroyo and FPJ (and it was never so), I'd pick FPJ anytime. A person with a good heart who means well, however he doesn't know the first thing about government, is infinitely better than a person with a good head who means ill, however she sandpapers things with PR. Intelligence is not a boon to the nation if it resides in the head of a hustler. It is a bane to it.
I already said my piece there during the campaign, and it is to FPJ's credit that he never took the things I said against him against me. On the one occasion I spoke to him before the elections, he never brought it up. He only thanked me for saying that when I was a kid I thrilled to see him play Daniel Barrion in the movies. He didn't know too many people who still remembered Daniel Barrion, much less saw his movies about Daniel Barrion. Most people remembered only Asedillo and Ang Panday. He spoke softly, much as he did in his movies, before the thugs pushed him to the wall and he defended himself with fast gun and flying fists. He was a gracious man, a monumental virtue in these ungracious times.
In any case, none of our objections to his presidential bid may allow us to slip FPJ surreptitiously into the footnotes of history, as a cultural icon that made the mistake of plunging into politics in the twilight of his career. I say this in particular because I've heard a number of people say, "Buti na lang, FPJ didn't become president or else we would now have Noli de Castro, or worse, Loren Legarda, for president!"
Well, maybe that would be a worse pass, but that doesn't excuse the silence of the Edsa I and II forces, notably civil society, in the face of Arroyo bankrupting government to campaign. That doesn't excuse the silence of the Edsa I and II forces, notably civil society, in the face of the statistical improbability that was the Cebu results. That doesn't excuse the silence of the Edsa I and II forces, notably civil society, in the face of the blatant efforts of the Commission on Elections and Congress to substitute their will for that of the voting public.
And all this presumably to prevent the "greater evil" from becoming president. That succeeded only in assuring the greater evil truly would. A greater evil that includes the Edsa I and II forces, including civil society, conspiring to thwart the sovereign will. I don't know that FPJ, and not Arroyo, won the elections. I do know the process was raped thoroughly. I cannot fault the majority of Filipinos who, if Ibon and SWS are to be believed, are convinced the wrong president sits in Malacañang. I was not one of those who wanted FPJ to be president, but that is neither here nor there. How the people actually voted is the only thing that matters. That is what elections are for. That is what democracy is for.
What irony that FPJ should be felled at the very time he was buckling down for a long fight for recognition as the rightful tenant of the house by the Pasig. I'm glad at least his supporters are determined to pick up the cudgels for him. Meanwhile, I grieve with the rest of them and go to bury a president.
The King is dead, long live Da King.
* * *
Just a reminder: Our benefit for the victims of the storms is on Dec. 20 at Conspiracy Café along Visayas Avenue. We'll start early, at 8 p.m., nang makarami. Eight to sawa, of course.
posted by Dante at 12:20 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home