Don't trivialize the use of honor

At long last, there’s that emphatic advice of sanity by Foreign Affairs protocol officer Angel Espiritu II to self-inflating and vanity-tripping officials: “Don’t call yourselves ‘Honorable’”.

The bubble of “honorable” is over-abused, turning into a bad habit that many elective nobodies – no matter how trivial and puny their public functions – have only made egoistic fun of themselves. With no law dignifying them as “honorable” – even if corrupt, inept, bumbling ignoramus and hardly literate trapos – they still indulge themselves with hyperbolic pettiness.

Starting with the resolution format of a town or city council listing the councilors present and absent, they now crown themselves as “Hon.”; so unlike Comelec resolutions that merely list the commissioners with just their complete names, but without any honorific title flattering them. But the growing fad now, “Hon.” is an inseparable affectation to most. Amusingly, they have habituated into a mutual admiration club by calling one another “honorable” even outside the session hall, instead of their nicknames.

A decade ago, one had some minor infrastructure work on a lot in Canduman, Mandaue City requiring a building permit, with the barangay clearance as prerequisite. Upon personal request, the barrio secretary prepared it for the barangay captain’s signature. The latter crossly insisted that “Hon.” should be affixed to his name. “Pagka-hilas gyud ning gagmayng isda”, one mumbled.

In Compostela, the past admin had a certain barangay lupon with members obviously hardly learned, also affixed “Hon.” to their names in official proceedings. “Labaw pa nga hilas gihapon”. The incumbent mayor must rectify such narcissistic penchant for undeserved protocol.

This past Lenten season, one followed over the radio the seven last words. What put its solemnity a cold damper was the attribution of sponsoring trapos, repeatedly interspersed. And over-using “Honorable” to a bevy of trapos, like, mayor, councilor, barangay captain, barrio councilmen, and their mates as well. The seven last words were soured and cheapened into empty jargons.

Our historical and cultural heritage is steeped with ceremonial distinctions. Before the Spanish conquest, there had been social elitism, like, datu or rajah, or other totem pole ranks. And Castillan patrimony ran through society’s warp and woof, say, the royalty titles, like “Señor/Señora”, “duke”, “rey/reina”, “principe/princesa”, “cabeza”, to cite some.

Our class biases had been shunted somehow by the American dislike for ceremonial and verbose appellations of courtesy attached to names. A typical American calls another by his first name, or affixes a “Mr.” to his surname.

The president, or a lawmaker, or a governor/mayor/councilor/barangay captain/ councilman, is by such designation civilly honored enough. No need to overdo it with superfluous and supercilious “honorable” clincher. As stressed by protocol officer Espiritu: “Affixing ‘Hon.’ to a public official’s name is “improper because courtesy should come from the public, or visitor and not the official pronouncing himself as such”.

For the judiciary, the use of “Your Honor”, “This Honorable Court”, or “His Honor”, or “The Honorable Presiding Judge”, is a unique judicial decorum since time immemorial. Appellations of respect are more addressed to the Court as the institution that interprets the laws and dispenses justice, with the magistrates/ justices/judges as the symbolic persona of the Courts.

Titles of respect and deference to the Courts are strict protocol requisites, and decorum sine qua non to stress that the Courts are not just like any other bureaucracy. And, in practice, such protocol is seldom in the first person, but often in the third person to drive home the point that the Honorable Courts are what they are, impersonal and non-subjective institutions of justice that are theoretically infallible.

* * *

Email: [email protected]