Not quite the same
Not quite the same
Updated 11:42pm (Mla time) Dec 26, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the December 27, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
JOSEPH Estrada spoke bitterly at FPJ's wake. He said he and the departed shared an uncanny fate. Both of them began from humble beginnings and worked their way to the top of the heap by guts, talent and hard work. Both of them believed in the rule of law, and fought for it against elements that would destroy it, such as the "Big Four," a syndicate that once terrorized Manila and Caloocan, which they engaged in the Filipino version of the OK Corral. And both of them were laid low by the hand of treachery, Erap by an impeachment trial based on manufactured evidence and FPJ by an election that reeked of fraud.
Well, the comparison doesn't quite hold, and Erap does his bosom friend ill to have made it. Not all the tearful goodbye and hand-holding can make up for it. It insults the dead.
The one thing in fact that put me off in the riveting spectacle that was the FPJ wake, which I watched with the avidness of a fan throughout last week, was the sight of Erap, Imelda Marcos, Ernesto Maceda and the various creatures from the Marcos and Erap regimes that flocked to Sto. Domingo like vultures. It was a grim reminder of the company FPJ kept, which tainted his presidential bid.
In fact, the one big hope the FPJ camp held out for disbelievers was that FPJ would not go the route of Erap if he won. During the campaign, my movie-director friends hastened to assure me that would be the case, FPJ was not Erap, he would never allow himself to be swayed by Erap and company into the wrong path. That wasn't hard, they said, because he wasn't beholden to them. Though FPJ had done much to get Erap elected-by Erap's own avowal during the wake, FPJ gave up lucrative projects to campaign for him-he never once went to Malacanang to ask any favor. Much to Erap's chagrin.
No, my friends said, FPJ was not Erap. They were friends, but they were not the same. But looking at the faces, or masks, strewn along the front pews at the wake, I wondered if that would have happened. If FPJ would truly have been able to tame the ravenous appetites of his friends, or prevent them from ravaging his rule, when they were as eager to capitalize on his death as they were on his life.
No, FPJ and Erap might have been the best of friends, but the trajectory of their lives was different. While Erap was delivering his speech, I was reminded of an old movie of theirs, the first time I think they acted together, which was "Iyo ang Tondo, Akin ang Maynila." In the movie, they met in the big city and became fast friends after a brief fight, but went on to embark in opposite paths. FPJ went straight and Estrada went wayward. Estrada died in the end, but not without making a redemptive act and ruing a misspent life. Life imitated art-except for the part about making a redemptive act and ruing a misspent life. Erap has yet to do either.
The "rule of law" Erap invokes in his protest against his impeachment is not the "rule of law" FPJ's widow, Susan Roces, invokes in her protest against her husband being cheated. The first is the "rule of law" championed by Marcos, the kind where the law is used to thwart justice. The kind where legal technicalities rather than the spirit of fairness decide right and wrong. Four years ago this month, we saw that in full glory in the halls of the Senate turned impeachment court: Erap's battery of lawyers, using their collective shrewdness to mangle the truth the way Marcos' lawyers-and Marcos himself, who was a lawyer-used to. A collective shrewdness that failed to hide the truth in the end, ironically when applied most ferociously, which was to prevent the second envelope from being opened. It sparked the second Edsa. That was the true rule of law.
More ironically, the "rule of law" Erap invokes is the same "rule of law" Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo invokes to stop FPJ's protest dead in its tracks. It is the same "rule of law" that allowed GMA to bankrupt the treasury to campaign-because the courts ruled there was nothing wrong with it-and allowed the Comelec and Congress to rape the electoral process savagely like Paquito Diaz did with the hapless damsels in FPJ's movies-because the world, including civil society, stood by and applauded.
The "rule of law" FPJ's widow invokes is the other "rule of law," the law that is allied with justice, that sees with the eyes of love and anger what is right and what is wrong. Despite what the judges say, judges who are blind in ways that Lady Justice is not. Lady Justice is blind only to cash, the judges are blind to truth. Despite what government threatens, a government which exists only at the sufferance of the citizens, whose current tenuousness and fragility owe not to any threat of violence from the outside but to the corrosive effect of corruption and rottenness from the inside. Lies are the greatest destabilizing agents of all.
No, Erap can never be the fuel that drives FPJ's electoral protest along. Nor, heaven forbid, can he ever be the rallying point of any move to drive the country along. He does not represent progress, he represents retardation. He does not represent health, he represents sickness. There is only one person who can drive FPJ's electoral protest along, and that is Susan Roces. She has conducted herself amid her travails with a dignity few Filipinos, man or woman, can hope to match. I do not know that she can be the rallying point of any move to drive the country along, but I do know that she has class, which is more than can be said for all this country's self-proclaimed leaders put together. Self-proclaimed because we don't really know if they got elected.
Erap and FPJ didn't quite share the same directions in life. But who knows? Maybe Susan Roces and her husband would. With different results.
Updated 11:42pm (Mla time) Dec 26, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the December 27, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
JOSEPH Estrada spoke bitterly at FPJ's wake. He said he and the departed shared an uncanny fate. Both of them began from humble beginnings and worked their way to the top of the heap by guts, talent and hard work. Both of them believed in the rule of law, and fought for it against elements that would destroy it, such as the "Big Four," a syndicate that once terrorized Manila and Caloocan, which they engaged in the Filipino version of the OK Corral. And both of them were laid low by the hand of treachery, Erap by an impeachment trial based on manufactured evidence and FPJ by an election that reeked of fraud.
Well, the comparison doesn't quite hold, and Erap does his bosom friend ill to have made it. Not all the tearful goodbye and hand-holding can make up for it. It insults the dead.
The one thing in fact that put me off in the riveting spectacle that was the FPJ wake, which I watched with the avidness of a fan throughout last week, was the sight of Erap, Imelda Marcos, Ernesto Maceda and the various creatures from the Marcos and Erap regimes that flocked to Sto. Domingo like vultures. It was a grim reminder of the company FPJ kept, which tainted his presidential bid.
In fact, the one big hope the FPJ camp held out for disbelievers was that FPJ would not go the route of Erap if he won. During the campaign, my movie-director friends hastened to assure me that would be the case, FPJ was not Erap, he would never allow himself to be swayed by Erap and company into the wrong path. That wasn't hard, they said, because he wasn't beholden to them. Though FPJ had done much to get Erap elected-by Erap's own avowal during the wake, FPJ gave up lucrative projects to campaign for him-he never once went to Malacanang to ask any favor. Much to Erap's chagrin.
No, my friends said, FPJ was not Erap. They were friends, but they were not the same. But looking at the faces, or masks, strewn along the front pews at the wake, I wondered if that would have happened. If FPJ would truly have been able to tame the ravenous appetites of his friends, or prevent them from ravaging his rule, when they were as eager to capitalize on his death as they were on his life.
No, FPJ and Erap might have been the best of friends, but the trajectory of their lives was different. While Erap was delivering his speech, I was reminded of an old movie of theirs, the first time I think they acted together, which was "Iyo ang Tondo, Akin ang Maynila." In the movie, they met in the big city and became fast friends after a brief fight, but went on to embark in opposite paths. FPJ went straight and Estrada went wayward. Estrada died in the end, but not without making a redemptive act and ruing a misspent life. Life imitated art-except for the part about making a redemptive act and ruing a misspent life. Erap has yet to do either.
The "rule of law" Erap invokes in his protest against his impeachment is not the "rule of law" FPJ's widow, Susan Roces, invokes in her protest against her husband being cheated. The first is the "rule of law" championed by Marcos, the kind where the law is used to thwart justice. The kind where legal technicalities rather than the spirit of fairness decide right and wrong. Four years ago this month, we saw that in full glory in the halls of the Senate turned impeachment court: Erap's battery of lawyers, using their collective shrewdness to mangle the truth the way Marcos' lawyers-and Marcos himself, who was a lawyer-used to. A collective shrewdness that failed to hide the truth in the end, ironically when applied most ferociously, which was to prevent the second envelope from being opened. It sparked the second Edsa. That was the true rule of law.
More ironically, the "rule of law" Erap invokes is the same "rule of law" Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo invokes to stop FPJ's protest dead in its tracks. It is the same "rule of law" that allowed GMA to bankrupt the treasury to campaign-because the courts ruled there was nothing wrong with it-and allowed the Comelec and Congress to rape the electoral process savagely like Paquito Diaz did with the hapless damsels in FPJ's movies-because the world, including civil society, stood by and applauded.
The "rule of law" FPJ's widow invokes is the other "rule of law," the law that is allied with justice, that sees with the eyes of love and anger what is right and what is wrong. Despite what the judges say, judges who are blind in ways that Lady Justice is not. Lady Justice is blind only to cash, the judges are blind to truth. Despite what government threatens, a government which exists only at the sufferance of the citizens, whose current tenuousness and fragility owe not to any threat of violence from the outside but to the corrosive effect of corruption and rottenness from the inside. Lies are the greatest destabilizing agents of all.
No, Erap can never be the fuel that drives FPJ's electoral protest along. Nor, heaven forbid, can he ever be the rallying point of any move to drive the country along. He does not represent progress, he represents retardation. He does not represent health, he represents sickness. There is only one person who can drive FPJ's electoral protest along, and that is Susan Roces. She has conducted herself amid her travails with a dignity few Filipinos, man or woman, can hope to match. I do not know that she can be the rallying point of any move to drive the country along, but I do know that she has class, which is more than can be said for all this country's self-proclaimed leaders put together. Self-proclaimed because we don't really know if they got elected.
Erap and FPJ didn't quite share the same directions in life. But who knows? Maybe Susan Roces and her husband would. With different results.
posted by Dante at 1:15 PM
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