Narrative

One could not help recalling the denizens of Jerusalem clamoring for the crucifixion of the badly tortured man from Nazareth. This was a mob carried away by an idea that suddenly became fashionable, demanding not evidence but persecution, expecting to be entertained by a public execution. The authorities obliged them.

The people who now demand the harshest treatment of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo are the same ones who, a decade ago, were demanding Joseph Estrada be put behind bars. These people, mainly from the left of the political spectrum, thrive on the politics of demonization and hate. They are not overly impressed by the tediousness of due process as they are by the spectacle of a lynching — literally, if possible, and with a surfeit of cruelty.

These people, some of them originating from political movements that regularly tortured and murdered their own colleagues en masse, last week threatened to enforce their version of a “people’s hold-departure order” thereby treating with disdain the institutions of law that makes democracy possible. They marched on the Supreme Court to protest a temporary restraining order expressing a preferential option for the Bill of Rights.

Over the weekend, they marched on a hospital, demanding that an obviously ailing former president be dumped in hail. Anything less than that, it seems, they frown upon as “preferential treatment.”

This week, according to reports, the group Bayan Muna plans to march on the Ombudsman to object to the former president’s plea for more time to prepare a counter-affidavit to their plunder complaint. Unseemly as it might be, they are demanding that the accused be given no sufficient quarters to reply to an accusation. That is chilling.

Where is all the viciousness coming from?

I suspect it draws from the political narrative on which movements of rage subsist. That narrative hinges on the simplistic thesis that all who rule the people are oppressors and the people are constantly oppressed. Unbridled rage is the weapon of the weak.

They wanted Estrada jailed then. They want Arroyo jailed now. They will want Noynoy Aquino to be jailed tomorrow. The ritual of political sacrilege is necessary to reinforce the narrative that keeps movements of rage going.

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, I suspect, yielded to the activists’ demand to totally humiliate Estrada by throwing him into jail in order to support her own legitimizing narrative. Her accession to power under unusual circumstances rested on the proposition that the nation needed to be saved from a failed presidency.

She was deeply disturbed by the polarizing trajectory of the politics surrounding “Edsa Tres.” Incarcerating Estrada and then seeing through a conviction for plunder, however, substantiated the legitimizing narrative of her own rule. Given the contingencies of the moment, jailing her predecessor took primacy.

While the legitimizing narrative indeed held sway, her presidency was engulfed by polarized politics nevertheless. That was the inescapable legacy of “Edsa Tres.” Civic discourse was poisoned. Every hint of scandal was magnified until it became an orgy of pompous accusations. Her rule was completely vilified, which was the means by which those aspiring to succeed her might have a stepping stone.

Through the length of her presidency, the pragmatics of political survival took precedence over every other consideration. That is the tragedy of it all.

The political opposition to the Arroyo presidency, the major portion of which participated in Estrada’s unceremonious ouster, subsisted for years on vilifying her rule. Their own narrative required that things be simplified into black and white, as the Black and White Movement epitomized.

In the unintelligent terrain of polarized politics, there could be no equivocation, no grey areas and little grey matter. Everything was reduced into a morality play: Gloria represented all that was evil and those who opposed her represented all that was good.

This might be silly oversimplification — but this is the necessary narrative, the only one that could encompass the diverse interests arrayed against the Arroyo presidency.

Noynoy Aquino personified this narrative. He is prisoner to it. It is the narrative that legitimizes his presidency against a sea of doubt about his worthiness or about the historical imprint he might leave.

That explains the obsessiveness about jailing Gloria as she had jailed Erap — even if this involved filing an highly contrived case with undue haste. The legitimizing narrative must be fed. Unless this narrative is fed, there is little else the Aquino presidency has in hand to hold on to its base of political support.

This is why both State of the Nation speeches so far delivered by the incumbent revolved around muckraking rather than vision-setting. This is, after all, a presidency voted into office on the basis of the poisoned narrative of the last political decade rather than on the basis of an affirmative vision of the future.

In feeding the poisoned narrative, however, the administration courts a constitutional crisis and wades deep into the quagmire that is the politics of hate. It must pander to the vengeful mob even as that might diminish the majesty of our institutions. It must constantly create cases that will focus the public on the sins of the past until the effort is fueled entirely by malice.

The poisoned narrative, while useful at the moment to vest legitimacy on the present leadership, has itself limited usefulness. If the contrived cases trip in court, the narrative will be punctured. When new scandals involving the present administration begin building up, the old narrative will lose its traction as a vehicle for retaining support.

The administration, however, is trapped in this narrative — no matter that it will inevitably pose irresolvable problems down the road.