Instead of skiing, apart from speaking, our President needed to let it out before a world audience.
In Davos, Switzerland where global leaders met recently to discuss the state of the world’s economy, President Bongbong Marcos found the perfect opportunity to tell the world why—not how—he became a politician, ultimately as the highest official of his country.
He never intended to be in politics, he said, but his father’s rude expulsion from Philippine politics in 1986 via the EDSA People’s Revolution, his family’s eventual six-year exile, their difficult survival, and concerned about his father’s legacy, compelled him to jump into politics. His father went through tough times in politics made the sacrifices, probably not all, to serve the country.
And what did he and his family get in return? It was the darkest day in their lives, he said, even for the country, the day they left Malacanang for Hawaii instead of Paoay. His return to the Philippines and becoming a politician was premised on the perceived unfair treatment the family received from their countrymen.
Those who disagree with his pathetic lamentation can match every word or sentence with pictures, videos and testimonies that will separate facts from fiction, the chaff from the grain.. The jury is still out whether PBBM has made converts after the conference. Those who heard him, or cared to listen to what he had to say, had the resources available to find out, if they didn’t know beforehand, that the message was true or not. Trolls and social media have made the search for truth difficult, if not impossible.
He brought along a big delegation speciously to answer any and all questions about the country’s need at present, including investments and loans to shore up a country that is more heavily indebted than ever, partly thanks or not thanks to his predecessor. The delegation is there for another purpose: to serve as living witnesses to confirm his unpleasant memories from his own people. One of them is a former president whose late father was a former president who sought asylum at the US embassy in Manila for fear of his safety.
You can forgive a man for killing you father, Machiavelli said, but not for not destroying his patrimony.
PBBM has apparently been doing a better job in that regard. He has become a congressman, senator and almost a vice president were it not for one Leni Robredo whom he later beat in the 2022 presidential race that ultimately brought another Marcos to the summit of political power. He has thfulcrum from which he can lift even probably the world. He has continue to be evasive about his family’s hidden/stolen wealth during the dictator’s regime, including a P23 billion or P203 billion estate tax due the government, notwithstanding court decisions, particularly those of the Supreme Court. He has met one-on- one the leaders of the most powerful states in the world, US and China. He’s a man in a hurry to change the old narrative.
So far, the former dictator has been successfully buried, after an eternity of a wake in his hometown, in a hallowed ground meant only for heroes and patriots. The medium is the message. What other things will be made or invented in his honor, there is at least about five years for the only son to do or bid. Once upon a time, soa it was said, a brave soldier led a guerrilla group known as Maharlika in defeating Japanese enemies during World War II somewhere in the Cordillera mountains.
Historians had debunked the dubious claim, along with the heroic medals that were supposed to have been given for the improbable war feat. The emperor was naked in the face of such make-belistory. A new Maharlika has recently emerged, this time it’s about fighting a different enemy to deal with the economic difficulty the nation is facing. It’s supposed to be a huge fund drawn from private sources, later on amended because of massive opposition, amended further to access funds from other sources until, as one expert commented that it no longer looks the same as it was meant to be.
You’ll never know, in fairness. The Davos sales pitch may just work. The melo-dramatic confession might just do the trick. The outsized delegation of experts and politicians might just convince some people to try the offer, who knows. On the biblical principle that the borrower is slave to the lender, it might be worth the try.
In his Davos message, was PBBM like Shylock asking for for a pound of flesh from Antonio who owed him? “ A pound of flesh is mine because I paid for it”, he told Portia, the judge. Fair enough, she agreed but told Shylock he should not, in the process, shed a drop of blood from Antonio. To be fair, PBBM made no such explicit demand in his message.
‘ The Marcoses are back, they and their President and ours ,too ( he is the President, too, of those who were responsible for their exile) still feel bad about their past, and no doubt have an ax to grind against their own people. Suffice and easy to say that their pent -up feelings and grievances, rightly and wrongly, will impact politics and governance in this country, as they have evidently done already, in the next five years or so, even beyond.
One harbinger of such impact would be if PBBM will signal, one way or the other, a Charter Change which former Supreme Court Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban recently opined that this is the i wrong time to do it. The other is how PBBM treats the opposition. There are no encouraging signs on the horizon so far. Former senator Leila de Lima is still in jail after six years while the former chief of staff of his presidential legal advisor has been released after a much shorter term in detention.
The ‘pound of flesh’ and the ‘drop of blood’ might as well be understood better not literally but metaphorically. Healing ,of course, of anything is said to be not only a matter of time but a matter of opportunity. Our leaders need to have such wisdom. It takes two to tango as to unify.
