On my phone the president is damned

I seem to perceive personally an unmistakable difference in the way we treat a past and a present leader. Pride and prejudice all over again. Are we near the point where societies, in struggles against varied forms of tyranny and oppression, inflame the minds of the ordinary citizens to topple their ruthless and corrupt rulers? In our case, the yawning gap of respectability between these two presidents is extremely hard to fathom. It is my hope that in putting to print this humble observation, I serve the selfish purpose of relieving myself of the personal guilt of being unable to form a plausible explanation why a certain leader is less loved (more hated would be appropriate) compared to the other.

To demonstrate this difference, let me cite a late survey that Past President Corazon C. Aquino, the first lady to hold that position in our country, rated high in the area of trust and credibility. I would not be overindulgent if I used the words “more loved”. The analysis of the survey results, given the kind of questionnaires posed to the respondents, indicated that a great majority of the Filipino people trusts the former president to uphold our democratic systems. This, to me, meant that if she were given the chance to lead our country again, (unfortunately, this is not possible), she would not use her powers to promote her own selfish interests or to pillage our national treasury. Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, on the other hand, miserably paled in comparison.

But, before proceeding, let me put things in their proper perspective. This is, to emphasize, a personal perception. Ever since the late Atty. Ong, once highly ranked official of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), came forward with a claim that he had in his possession the master of the tapes which eventually came to be notoriously known as the “Hello, Garci” tapes, I continue, up to the present, to receive text messages derogatory to Pres. Arroyo. This is a sustained period of about 4 years already although, to be truthful about it, I do not know why these should be sent to my cellular phone. It is personal because I am not sure if other persons have gotten their share of these scurrilous attacks on the dignity of the sitting president. My lovely lady, when I inquired from her about this kind of messages the other day, could only rhetorically ask what had driven so many people to spend much for these texts.

I never thought that the cellular phone would become a purveyor of hate. There have been several of them, cursing and damning Pres. Arroyo, I had to delete them in the course of time to give space. Sometimes, they would come in bunches while others were spread in between days. Just the same, they kept coming. They portrayed President Arroyo in such distasteful language that could only come from hard-core oppositionists. People who might have personally suffered from the presidential acts subjects of their attacks could also have authored those stinging charges against the honor of Pres. Arroyo.

Their venom varied depending, probably, on the malleability of the senders’ social background, their political preferences and philosophical training and understanding. I had to disregard immediately those that were downright vulgar, but had to decipher the weight of those written in indescribable motley of Tagalog and other dialects. There were messages challenging my mind because their prejudice was wrapped in exquisite English or inscribed in profound philosophical language.

There is this discernible trend. Within the same period of about 4 years, I have yet to receive, on my cellular phone, a statement praising Pres. Arroyo. In fact, each time the president appears on television announcing this or that program, a deluge of critical text messages, as if acting on cue, follows with all the texts seemingly competing for the dubious distinction of being couched in the most acrid language.

Why has the president of our republic become the object of the hatred of many? Let those who truly (and I mean truly) believe in the honesty and integrity of the president send their texts messages to me for some degree of my comfort or lose by general default to the surging crowd of the president’s fiends.

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