“Wit”, according to Patrick O’Brian, ”is the copulation of ideas.”
In the case of President Bong Marcos’ inaugural speech, it can be fairly said that it was chock-full of them – copulation (and discombobulation,too) in many ways. Wonder not if he outwitted, out-trolled his rivals and got the presidency deep in his pocket as clean as a whistle many feel there was broad- day light robbery.
On the whole, BBM’s plan is clear but not so simple: forge ahead, forget the past, and voila, he has whetted people’s appetite about his first state of the nation address next year. It was a political hors d’oeuvre.
To a man, the Filipino nation, like the biblical image of a man whose hand is on the plow, will break hard ground, not look back at all, and move forward not in a mild lurch but with such an over whelming enthusiasm, and the field will bloom like it did in the past. It will be Paradise regained. “ Most men admire virtue,” John Milton wrote, “ who follow not her lore”.
“It will take it as far as anyone with the same commitment can, as if it depends entirely on himself”, he said. There’s the promise, there’s the epiphany. There is also nostalgia and utopia.
Oops, but didn’t he say never mind what’s behind?
In one sense, it was Paulinian in its spiritual-like emphasis: forget the things which are behind and pressing forth with the things which are before. The message is stamped with a missionary zeal as if it were an existential urgency. Of course, he , BBM, said and meant existential.
In another sense, it was Churchillian, with the sentimental flavor of “blood, sweat, tears – minus the tears—in his offer of service to the nation. “ But I will n spare myself from shedding the last bead of sweat or giving the last ounce of courage and sacrifice.
Talk is cheap. The honorable and patriotic pledge would have reverberated beyond the ancient hall of the once legislative institution his late father abolished to become a dictator, if he declared he would pay the long-over due P203 billion estate tax his family supposedly owes the government.
Or for dramatic effect, he could have ordered his new tax woman, who overtured him of his modelling role, right there and then, to send him the demand letter without delay and he will settle the obligation ASAP which has been apparently ignored since the Supreme Court ruled they owe the government P23 billion in 1999.
Alas, the promise had the ring of a pastor leading a congregation in singing “Rescue the
Perishing” hymn with such sense of urgency and conviction a young boy came up to the pulpit and begged him “ let’s do it”. To which the pastor replied” it’s only a song, boy.
The message has also a Kennedysque touch “ ask not what the country can do for you but what you can do for the country”, although it’s muddled with ambiguity. He appealed for the legendary Bayanihan way of the Filipinos but said it will not require much from them “ to build a divided house” as it were.
Is BBM setting himself for a comeuppance? “O what a tangled we weave”, warned the poet Walter Scott, “ when first we practice to deceive”.
“I am not here to talk about the past. I am here to talk about the future”, he said. The past, or what passes for a “golden age”, in his mind is simply too good to forget. A son that also rises, as Hemingway put it, deserves some concession.
“ I once knew a man who saw what little had been achieved since independence, in a land of people with greatest potential of achievement, and yet they were poor, but he had done it. So will it be with his son.”
Of course, everyone knew who the unidentified man was, who is now buried in a sacred
ground for heroes because, ultimately what he did was allegedly heroic. So the son is set to accomplish what is also an equal task. That man, of course, was thrown out of power and out of “ the land of the poor” in a peaceful democratic revolution that history shows as clear and vivid manifestation of their greatest potential.
The most credible part of his speech was when he said the Philippines had nothing to do
with the Ukraine war but, nevertheless, bear the consequences of it. It has the risible effect of a comedic scene in a movie where the comedian Rene Requiestas denied he had something to do with the death of Lapulapu. Life imitating art.
Justice was never part of his speech. This was, to say the least, a big disappointment after the National Bureau of Investigation found that 22 policemen that are supposed to be members of the country’s finest can be held accountable for the mysterious death of 8 prisoners in a Muntinglupa jail, one or some of whom had accused former Sen. Leila de Lima of involvement in drug-related crimes. Other prisoners who had the same claim, and are still alive and kicking, had recanted their claims which they said they were coerced or threatened into doing.
This one case, let alone the other humans rights abuses during his predecessor’s ‘ war on
drugs’, is a huge challenge to his Constitutional duty to give justice to everyone, regardless of political color. And then there is the resumption of an international court probe into his predecessor’s human rights violations.
But then, his father’s regime had been riddled with human rights issues, among others.
So, which past should the Filipino remember and which one they should forget?
Take your pick, the answers are in the president’s speech.
