REMEMBER? Scribbled in bold black on a yellow post-in on page 102 of my book About Oca: A Story of Struggle (2005) atop a copy of Punto! opened to my column Roxas, the Absurd.
A not-so-subtle reminder from the wife: Why make Mayor Oscar Rodriguez a collateral damage to the blasting of Secretary Mar Roxas, when I have written so many good things about him.
So again I read Defining Oca:
…The contention for the governorship has always been predictably premised by predictable pretenders on the most predictable motherhood political statement: to serve the people, variegated to the nuances of social status, economic stratification, religious divide, and – in keeping with the politically correct times – gender sensitivity of a given audience. All gas-passing. All signifying nothing.
Cong Oca breaks out of the predictable mould, with a run for the governorship that is tri-fold: Duty. Challenge.
Crusade.
Of the proletariat, Cong Oca’s conscientization has always been plebeian. Inured in the praxis of social justice, proactive selflessness makes his sense of duty.
That which is expressed in the concept of hero-in-history and epitomized by Lincoln: “When he has in him to give, and the times demand of him to give, he has no other recourse but to give.”
Something akin to the oft-quoted misattribution to Burke: “All it takes for evil to triumph is for the good man to do nothing.” Something out of the Zen dhammapada:
A man who sees wrong and does not try to correct it is only half a man.” Something like that “…greater than Mount Tai…lighter than a feather” quotation from the Little Red Book of a bygone youth.
To give to what duty demands. Not simply embedded but thoroughly embodied in man must be the long forgotten but still most relevant Roman ideals of dignitas and gravitas.
Beyond the English word derived from it, dignitas translates to the totality of a man’s pedigree, integrity, intelligence, values and courage dedicated to and actualized for the good of his community, thereby endowing him with gravitas – the weight and wealth of experienced acquired in the service of man – bestowing upon him the right and entitlement to public honor.
It is therefore the man that gives dignity to the title or position. Ours today is the very perversion of that ideal.
See how we dignify just about every rascal, rogue and scoundrel who buy public offices and steal from the public coffers. “Honorable,” we append to their names.
Cong Oca’s dignitas was forged in the anvil of the Marcos dictatorship. His gravitas put through the crucible of the Estrada impeachment. What test of character can be greater and more exacting than these?
Duty indeed becomes Oscar Rodriguez. As Ed Aguilar of The Voice is wont to say. As the body of laws he effected manifests.
Kagimpan ding anak pawas ing magsilbi king balen. Founded on that proletarian principle is Cong Oca’s challenge to the moneyed interests that have reduced elections to a high stakes game of Monopoly.
Ever pictured as a pauper and many times ridiculed for his utter lack of financial resources, Cong Oca’s own political career – winning in 1987, losing in1992, winning overwhelmingly in 1995, 1998 and 2001 – negates the pre-eminence of money as an element in electoral victory.
Who dares, wins. Cong Oca dares. Cong Oca wins.
Voting is a sacred duty. The ballot is no saleable commodity. Thereby lies the challenge to the citizenry.
Cong Oca views the 2004 gubernatorial contest beyond the purely political perspective and sees a moral dimension to it. A morality play between good and evil. Less a quest than a crusade.
For good government, effective leadership, efficient and honest bureaucracy. Above all, real-time service to the people. In the belief that the potential of Pampanga for development is barely scratched.
Convinced that the shortchanged Capampangan deserves so much better from the Capitol.
A quest impossible. Don Quixote de la Mancha jousted with windmills in his bid to follow the stars. He fell and failed.
A crusade possible. Cong Oca with Marcos and battled with Erap. Daunting challenges both. He won.
The governorship is as daunting, if not more so. So the Crusade goes on. (Commentary/Bong Z. Lacson, Sun-Star Pampanga, July 18, 2003).
Yes, Oca’s once-in-a-lifetime shot at the Pampanga governorship was in 2004. Haloed as he was by his crucial role in the impeachment of Estrada, standing tall on the moral plane, his right hand holding aloft the standard of good governance.
Alas, for whatever reason, he squandered that chance.
Came 2007 and Oca’s views of the fight for the governorship were appropriated, if not arrogated unto himself, by the suspended priest Eddie T. Panlilio – and he succeeded where Oca did not even dare.
What was it that John Greenleaf Whittier wrote? “For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.”
So Oca opted for the mayorship and has been there – so excelling as local chief executive, if we take media’s say-so, that his congressional deeds have been relegated to the deep recesses of the short collective memory of the people.
Now that he’s running for congressman again, maybe – I told the wife – Oca needs to re-read my book too.
