The enemy is boredom

It’s so Pinoy. The President’s SONA (State of the Nation Address) was attacked right and left even before it is delivered – as it will be this afternoon.

Everybody has been prancing around hurling thunderbolts (or firecrackers that merely went pffft) on what he or she considers the "real" state of the nation.

The problem is that the actual state of this dispirited nation is boredom – which, in my estimation, is even worse than cynicism. A cynic, despite holding a perverse and pessimistic view of the situation, at least expresses some emotion. Those who are "bored" simply don’t care. They don’t squander any emotion over what they consider hopeless.

The public, for all the gimmickry and costume-changing, is, alas, finding the GMA administration – because she doesn’t undertake any new initiatives but falls back on the old rhetoric – boring. Indeed, even when she recruits "new" officials and advisers, we find her trotting out Old Faces. In the dear old days in Jakarta of the late Indonesian dictator, President Sukarno (Megawati’s father), when a Cabinet minister was bounced, he was called "re-tooled". I dearly loved the old Bung, but his speeches, while burning with oratorical fervor, repeated the same old phrases so persistently that we foreign correspondents were already murmuring his lines before he delivered them. In the case of GMA, Cabinet Secretaries are "recycled" – meaning they are recycled from previous administrations or from the opposition.

As for the opposition, its members are as bored with each other as the public is bored with them. Former Senate President Edgardo Angara looks more and more pathetic daily as he nervously "counts heads" to see who remains with his "New Majority" – which, yesterday, became the "New Minority". Why? Because, as everybody expected (probably even Angara), Senator Robert Jaworski "changed court" and joined the Administration bloc of incumbent Senate President Franklin Drilon. At which Drilon, without batting an eye, praised Jawo for his "patriotism".

Sus, wasn’t it the great British lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) who declared that "patriotism is the refuge of a scoundrel"? Must have been referring to somebody else, of course.

Years later, the American author and skeptic, Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) asserted: "In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect… I beg to submit that it is the first."

I also recall that when GMA’s late father, President Diosdado Macapagal, induced the majority in Congress to become "turncoats" and join his Liberal Party, he also labelled them "patriots". That term, sad to say, has become terribly devalued.

Why did Jaworski "defect"? Not I’m sure because he owes the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) more than P200 million. (A senator and a gentleman is never – horrors – swayed by sordid monetary considerations.) Is it because his pro-Administration father-in-law, Sen. Ramon Revilla, now back in town again from U.S. medical treatment, told him to rejoin the family? Is it because his brother-in-law, former Cavite Governor and movie star, Bong Revilla, has just been named by GMA chairman of the Videogram Regulatory Board (VRB) and, more importantly, been pledged a slot in the administration party’s Year 2004 Senatorial ticket? Sanamagan: If Bong wins, then we won’t have a Senate any longer. It will be a family reunion.

After all, Yvonne de Gaulle – when her husband, the great General Charles de Gaulle, was President of France – had pointed out: "The presidency is temporary – but the family is permanent."

We used to have, many years ago, a Two-Party system. Now we have "Partyless Democracy". There is only one party that remains unchanged and unchangeable – the Birthday Party.

* * *

The Jaworski move means that Malacañang has won the fight to regain control of the Senate. Drilon now has 13 votes. Even if Sen. Vicente "Tito" Sotto keens on swearing that he’ll stick with the Angara and Pimentel group, even if President GMA wants him to oversee the government’s Dangerous Drugs Board, his "vote" is no longer needed anyway.

It was, indeed, passing strange for GMA to try to recruit Sotto as her overall consultant in the government’s anti-illegal drugs campaign. Wasn’t Sotto accused some years ago of having very strong links to a drug lord named A.T., whose alleged shabu factory was, in fact, located in Lubao, Pampanga, i.e. GMA’s own home town? Although then Justice Secretary Teofisto Guingona (there went Tito again!) was among those who went after A.T. hammer and thong, Sotto’s ties to him were never… well, proven. As for A.T., he was acquitted of drug offenses by Quezon City Regional Trial Court Judge Jaime Salazar. But this was for failure of the government prosecutors to establish his guilt "beyond reasonable doubt".

The fascinating thing about A.T.’s alleged plant for the manufacture of shabu is that it was located in Barangay Gumi, a barrio of Lubao which is accessible only by motorboat – or banca. In short, it can be reached only over water, without a road leading to it. The accused drug-maker insisted that his huge cmpound in Gumi was only a "hollow blocks" factory. Can you imagine manufacturing hollow blocks in a place where your heavy products utilized in construction could only be transported out in boats, barges or bancas? What an illogical spot in which to put a hollow block factory! (Ideal, on the other hand, for something else. You could spot – or hear – anybody coming a kilometer away.)

In any event, Sotto (I hear) immediately rang up Senator Aquilino "Nene" Pimentel at his Marikina residence to assure him he was not leaving the anti-administration group.

Now it doesn’t matter.

* * *

At the well-attended farewell dinner hosted by Speaker Jose de Venecia last Friday in honor of our friend Russian Ambassador Anatoli Khmelnitski and his charming wife Valentina (who’re leaving for Moscow – and retirement – after more than six years in the Philippines), there was an entire battalion of Ambassadors from Asia and Europe as well as our very able Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Frank Ebdalin.

All of them were asking the other guests, including this writer, who was going to be the next Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary. The second question was invariably: Will it be Blas Ople?

I could only reply, for my part, that "it’s still anybody’s guess" to the first question. With regard to the second query, my answer was that "he fervently hopes so."

Up to yesterday, Ka Blas Ople kept on repeating that he was voting with Angara et al., but it remained clear that he wants to be DFA Secretary. His column yesterday, Horizons, in the Manila Bulletin, was categorically entitled: "Weighing My Options: The Agony of Decision."

He begins his agonizing column with the words, "Where does duty and honor point me?"

Then, he admits that there has been no formal offer made to him. In his own words: "The truth is that in spite of many speculations to the contrary, I have not received any formal offer from the President to be her Secretary of Foreign Affairs, although there have been overtures from some emissaries. Neither have I applied for this exalted job. I have in fact tried to shape events so that both President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and myself would have complete freedom of choice up to the deadline I have set for myself, which is anytime next week following the resolution or non-resolution of the struggle for political supremacy in the Senate."

It’s no secret that Senator Ople covets that job. His men have been fanning out to newsrooms, inserting stories drumming up his prospects and the fact that he and GMA had discussed this "possibility" as early as last December. Where do you think all those stories came from? It’s also rumored that he wants one of his sons, currently mayor of Hagonoy, Bulacan, to be anointed candidate for governor of Bulacan by the Palace. Another son, who ran for Congress and lost, is waiting for his next opportunity. Is Ka Blas ready to switch coats? Need we answer that question?

The question is that, now that Jawo has jumped the fence to the Palace side, hasn’t Senator Ople’s "vote" become academic? What will GMA do by the "deadline" hinted at by Ople as "next Friday"? For that matter, why was Blas setting deadlines at all? One gets the impression it is GMA who is desperately courting him.

H. L. Mencken once remarked that "a politician is an animal that can sit on a fence and keep both ears to the ground." I’m still trying to figure that one out.

* * *

What’s this nonsense about the police planning to file double homicide and frustrated homicide charges against former Action Star and Hagibis Rock Band singer Sonny Parsons today? Parsons, 44, whose name is Jose Nabiula in real life (I think his family came from Sulu), is regarded by everybody as a hero.

Last Thursday morning, after six akyat bahay gang members broke into Parsons’ home in Marikina, hogtied him and his two daughters, tried to rape one of the girls, ransacked his place, took his weapons, then left, Parsons got himself untied, grabbed a gun the raiders had overlooked, and chased after the hoodlums.

In the resulting shoot-out, he killed two of the robbers, ran out of bullets, was attacked by a third with a knife (which he grabbed from the assailant, then utilized to slit the thug’s throat). Now he’s being charged because the encounter took place "outside" his home? What did the police and those idiotic "human rights" complainants expect? After what they did to him and his family, did they expect him to stand on the sidewalk and wave "goodbye" to those thugs? Fortunately, former Interior Secretary and ex-Manila Mayor Fred Lim, a two-fisted cop himself and NBI chief in his day, rushed to volunteer to defend Parsons in court or anyplace where he might be challenged.

The truth is that everybody is cheering for Parsons. He’s the guy who fought back to defend his family. Those bullies and robbers picked on the wrong guy.

* * *

This is a country, alas, where the law seems to protect killers, kidnappers, rapists and hoodlums even more tenderly than it protects the victims and the innocent. No wonder citizens are turning, increasingly, to gun law. This is a Wild Frontier, deplorably, where so-called "civilized" methods don’t seem to work. Even with the bishops bleating against capital punishment, the widespread mood these days seems to be: Kill them before they kill you. Somehow, it makes sense.

If the police are smart, they’ll leave Parsons alone. Give him a medal. (Give him another gun to protect himself – remember, the robbers took his weapons.)

Senator Robert Kennedy (JFK’s brother, who was assassinated himself in 1968) said: "Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on:"

Those robbers, akyat-bahay and Waray Gang, scum, who burst into homes and terrorize peaceful residents, torment their families, and even rape and kill, are an indictment of the ineffectiveness of our government and police. When hoodlums rampage all over our neighborhoods, it’s a sign that the cops are either asleep, or cowardly, or are, in fact, members of those criminal organizations.

That it should be "every man for himself" is a slap on the face of the GMA government, and it won’t be papered over by any SONA. Smash those criminal gangs, Madam President! And if our policeman can’t do that, let’s get ourselves another police force.

Otherwise, everyone will be joining a Gun Club like Parsons did. For it’s useless to draw a gun unless you can shoot straight.