The posthumous conferment of the National Artist Award for Cinema on the late screen great Fernando Poe Jr., like all other conferments of highly-respected awards, are supposed to be attended with a high sense of decorum and grace appropriate for such occasions.
It is therefore unfortunate that Poe’s widow Susan Roces would turn the affair into a political platform from which she then launched into yet another harangue at her favorite peeve, former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Arroyo defeated Poe in the presidential elections of 2004, in what many people believe was a stolen victory. Given the outcome of such elections, it is understandable for Roces to feel such acrimony toward Arroyo.
But the conferment of the National Artist Award on Poe is something that is altogether different and distinct from politics. The award recognizes the great contribution Poe has made in his lifetime to cinema, and through art, some betterment in the life of the Filipino.
How ironic then that Poe’s own widow would be the one to unwittingly cheapen and demean the award her late husband so richly deserved. Instead of being remembered as a fitting cap to a life-long commitment, the award will henceforth be remembered as the day Roces smacked Arroyo.
What distinguishes the award will be lost forever under a new description Roces gave it — as the award “given by a duly-elected president (President Aquino),” not one once offered, and which she duly rejected, by a “pseudo” president (Arroyo).
Under such a dark atmosphere in what otherwise should have been a happy occasion, maybe it was only fitting that the fates would play along and give the players in the farce the tragic endings they deserve.
Perhaps to spite Roces, the fates also tweaked Aquino, the other player. A video footage of him after the ceremony had him attempting to look and sound more intellectual than he really is, by trying to quote John F. Kennedy and embarrassingly getting the famous quote all wrong.
Here is how Aquino quoted JFK (verifiable on ANC tape): “I see things as they are and say why not?” Now, here is what JFK actually said: “Some men see things as they are and ask why? I dream things that never were and say why not?” Roces and Aquino can have the award themselves, too.