Yellow

Asked in all seriousness by a sympathetic businessman about how they may help the President in the midst of all his troubles, Aquino replied that his supporters come out and wear yellow ribbons — a faded emblem that only he seems to be sporting today.

That was by no means a joke — although it will probably not lift the shroud of unconstitutionality imposed by the Supreme Court on his spending behavior. Uttered in all seriousness, the matter was obviously not thought through.

The looming war of the branches is about to degenerate further into an infantile war of ribbons. If it were not so tragic, it should be comic.

To begin with, there is no reason to war against the coequal branches. True, the administration is preparing to file a motion for reconsideration on the SC ruling on DAP. Most lawyers I have talked to think the only matter at stake here is the delineation of culpability. No way the original ruling of unconstitutionality will be reversed.

The call for supporters to come out and wear yellow ribbons on their chests will politicize a judicial issue. It will polarize the population. It will produce acrimony and maybe even factional tussle. It is thoroughly misled.

Red Book

Aquino’s call for the yellow ribbons to be brought out calls to mind Mao Zedong’s disastrous instructions to his supporters that brought about the murderous Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Towards the middle of the sixties, Mao’s leadership was under siege both within the Party and among senior bureaucrats. His stupid Great Leap Forward (a program of rapid industrialization) from the late fifties proved disastrous. About 20 million people were estimated to have perished from the famines that resulted when Mao instructed farmers to melt their implements to produce steel.

By this time, according to accounts, Mao was probably drug-crazed and confined to his harem in Beijing. He issued a document titled “Bombard the Headquarters” addressed to young communist fanatics. In it, he warned of creeping “revisionism” out to derail the socialist project. He called out his young supporters to defend his vision.

In response, millions of Red Guards took to the streets and chaos ensued. Priceless artifacts were destroyed because they bore Confucian culture. Intellectuals were persecuted and professors were murdered in universities. Millions of books were burned.

Senior Party cadres, Deng Xiaopeng most notably, were dragged through the streets and sent out to clean pig stys. The bureaucracy was terrorized. Technocrats were decimated. Chaos ruled. Famine was widespread.

The know-nothing Red Guards had only Mao’s Little Red Book of quotations for guidance. The results were tragic.

Order could be restored only many years later, after Mao died and his stalwarts purged. It was the persecuted Deng who led in restoring sense to the national economy and proper institutional capacity to the government.

Mao was insane to have reduced the strategic policy questions regarding modernization into a “struggle of two lines.” He politicized what ought to be engineering questions. He weakened the institutions of governance and relegated China’s most talented leaders to the mobs.

This was a sad episode, compounding the tragedy that was The Great Leap Forward. It happened because Mao put his personal political hegemony over the greater interest of the nation.  He sacrificed institutions for his own vanity.

Then, too, by this time he was no longer sane (perhaps he never was) — although he was still worshipped by the most fanatical Maoists as infallible.

Tri-color

Responding to the President’s infantile call for his supporters to don yellow ribbons, other groups responded with their calls for ribbons of other hues. This is getting funnier by the day.

The origin of the Yellow Ribbon is funny to begin with. It originated from a pop song about a convict returning home after doing his time.

The militant groups called on their followers to wear peach ribbons. Why peach, a fruit few of us here have seen? It is derived from the word “impeach.” Get it? That is even funnier.

A network of concerned citizens meanwhile digitally distributes ribbons bearing the three colors of the national emblem. The most patriotic thing that could be done in these circumstances is to reiterate adherence to the nation, not to any political faction.

Aquino, they note, never wore the flag on his chest. He always sported that yellow ribbon pin even in the most important national events. It never occurred to him that, as one of our eminent statesmen put it, his loyalty to the party ends where his loyalty to the nation begins.

Wearing the national tri-color is meant to emphasize the primacy of defending our national institutions against the virus of autocracy that now contaminates our political life.

It is Friday as I write this. I have walked our typhoon-ravaged streets, partaking of the misery of having no electricity two days after the storm. I have not run into any one wearing any ribbon of any hue.

That is a good sign.