Ampaw

It is the misfortune of the ringleaders of the failed Oakwood mutiny that they survived the perilous misadventure they initiated.

Had the tense negotiations failed and government forces attacked, they would have been killed. Had they been killed, it might have been possible for those who pushed them to do what they did to unjustly proclaim them martyrs.

In which case, they might have been lionized by the most impressionable in our midst. They might have been declared heroes by those who make ranting and raving a robust cottage industry in our ill-starred economy.

They would not need the grandstanding lawyers that they must now endure. Our society might have been spared the tremendous embarrassment of a substandard Senate hearing. Gringo Honasan would not need to make himself inaccessible. The vociferous mouthpieces of PMAP along with their friends at Sanlakas might have made the shattered Oakwood a shrine to inarticulate heroes, laying down bouquets on bloodstained pavements.

Since our culture puts great weight on honoring the dead, no matter what ruckus they died for, the integrity of the ringleaders would not have been besmirched. No one would ask about the dead Trillanes’ failure to submit his statement of assets and liabilities. Or why he had eight expensive vehicles in his name. Or why he organized a "consulting company" that engaged in self-dealing.

Indeed, we would all be spared this unsavory business of inquiring into strange scars inflicted on smelly armpits.

The febrile Argee Guevarra and his permanently annoyed comrades at Sanlakas might have attempted, out of habit, to create a personality cult around the likeness of the photogenic Trillanes. They might even have erected a puny monument to the felled mutineers, similar to the monument this gang built for the checkered Popoy Lagman.

But alas, the spoiled brats who chose the opulent Oakwood as sanctuary for an ambitious power grab outlived their folly.

They must now suffer the consequences of survival: the most horrible of which might be to listen Bono Adaza’s advice day in and day out.

They must also endure the irreverence (and sometimes irrelevance) of congressional hearings. We saw, in the Senate inquiry last Thursday, how such hearings might amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

At the onset, lawyers for the mutineers agitated for national security considerations to be set aside and their clients allowed a public forum to explain their cause. The lawyers bet that the television-friendly faces of the mutineers would manage to win public sympathy for the boys of Oakwood.

They bet wrongly.

After one tortuous session before the Feliciano Commission and another long day before the Senate committee-of-the-whole, the ringleaders shriveled under pressure. They lost their logic first and then their cool. They couldn’t sell their lawyer-rehearsed stories. Their alibis unraveled badly.

These weren’t just pretty boys with pretty big guns. They were rebels without a clue.

In our cinema-crazed society, I am nearly sure someone will make a movie someday about these arrogant but pathetic boys who could not reconcile their moralizing with their morals, their generalizations with their generals. I suggest the movie be called Clueless in Oakwood.

By Friday, Bono Adaza was throwing in the towel before the Feliciano Commission. He asked that his boys be spared further punishment from the cruel expectation for coherence in testimony.

His boys wanted to grandstand but they did not have the vocabulary to sustain it. They wanted to swing popular emotions but they did not have the demeanor to manage it. They wanted to enthrall the population but they did not have a story to tell.

We have a colloquial term for characters like them: ampaw.

They are nice and crunchy outside, empty inside. Vacant. Vacuous. All air, no substance. Ampaw.

The hearings were not unfair to the mutineers. It was the mutineers who were unfair to the society that nurtured them and the democracy they were sworn to defend.

They terrorized all of us without first going through the discipline of clarifying their own thoughts, examining their own allegiances and appraising the motives of the glib conspirators who goaded them – and then sacrificed them.

And so now we are all left with the unwholesome task of defending an imperfect democracy against an imperfect rebellion led by volatile rascals. This is the tragedy of it all.

We all nurse a variety of grievances about the society we find ourselves in, about the way we have been led and the means we are left with to find redress. We all try to do something each day so that the future will be kinder to our children.

It is unfair that utterly misguided commandos brusquely commandeered our grievances to serve the vainest of ambitions.

In the aftermath of yet another disastrous coup attempt, we are left with little choice but to put back our tattered economy on its feet as best we can. It is unfair that, as we go through this already familiar exercise, we hear Glib Gringo’s voice from his place of inaccessibility reminding us that, oh yes, he was still in the running for President.

As the authorities vigilantly collect evidence against this unholy and stupid conspiracy, we find the fingerprints of Joseph Estrada’s friends and lovers all over the place. It is unfair, as the investigations follow valid leads, for the Senate floor to be used by Estrada’s wife and the hysterical showbiz forums used by his mistress to cry political persecution.

Perhaps we do need a moment of silence here. And in that moment of silence, may we rediscover things in their proper proportion.

Pray, may we see with pure eyes treachery where it lies and uncover the truth cowards would rather conceal. May we be granted the wisdom to know the difference.

And may we be spared the yakking of worthless ampaws.