Death Becomes Us

For some reason, I wanted to see people die last week.  Perhaps, for a change.  For some time now, extrajudicial killings, missing people, assassinations, ambush killings, etc, have “ruled the airwaves” but these have not really moved the people to do something.  It takes at least one life to mobilize throngs of people to really do something.  Ninoy made it happen for us when he got himself killed.  I don’t want to sound so callous and cold but there are simply things in this country that have made me feel less and less for people who claim to be the agents of change.

I personally want a revolution.  I know that I will not see it in my lifetime.  A 360-degree turn will not happen overnight.  And with the people that we have on board right now, I’d rather stick my butt out for the pixie prexy than go for a blabbermouth of a young (tra)politician, a broadcast journalist turned crying lady turned turncoat lady, a presidential scion whose girlfriend would be his downfall, a businessman with two left feet donning tangerine and using a popular 80s acronym to describe sexy films as his tagline with a different twist or an evangelist that I voted for because I truly believed in him until he became a very sore loser. 

Well, there’s Dick Gordon who will never win until he becomes a Payumo.  I remember marching for Gordon a month after Erap was installed into the highest post of the land and we wore pins that screamed, Don’t Touch My Dick!  Of course, we failed.  Payumo still got the post and Gordon was still unpopular. 

I have another bet—and I know he will never win too!  Bayani Fernando.  I used to have another bet.  But Death got him first.  And I will never vote for his wife ever.  To do a “Cory” will never work this time—most especially when you’re not in yellow. 

We love people who will be there for us KBL: kasal, binyag, libing (wedding, baptism, funeral).  We want to line up in politician’s houses to ask for moolah for this and that.  We don’t want people who will do something to uplift our lives and standards of living.  Why?  Because that will take some time.  And we want solutions now.  And we want it with people who can dole out money anytime, all the time. 

But we, Filipinos, are lovers of soap opera.  We devour telenovelas the way we feast on lechon.  Had somebody died in Manila Pen last week after arrogantly declaring that they will die for their cause for the nth time, people would have gone out of their houses and make that much-needed change happen.  But an elementary psy-war sent the once-brave men with their tails between their legs to the ground and claiming police brutality afterwards.  For a now-senator and forever officer and gentleman, such lack of foresight, strategem and genuine fervor for change just prove to me that I made the right choice when I did not support the guy.  Now, Faeldon would have been something else.  That’s one force to reckon with. And I don’t think a teargas would send him crying for his Mama.   

Ok, let’s just say that two Ts brought them down: teargas and tank.  When I saw the tank force its bulk into the lobby of the Pen, I did not even think of anything else other than a realization that a tank could actually fit into the lobby if the doors were a bit wider and higher. 

I am not an elitist and never will I be one.  But I look down on rich people who say that they empathize with the poor and the masses.  HOW?!  These people do not even have any idea how it is to go broke with nothing and NOTHING in their pockets to even buy a stick of fishballs.  This is one of the reasons why regardless of what people say about Joker Arroyo, he will forever be on my good side.  The guy has lived in a posh subdivision in Makati, sent his daughter to Cambridge, took the beating for Mrs. Aquino while she was hiding under the bed when she had the biggest chance to revolutionize the country for allegedly being a leftist, and sat on the highest post of two major banks in the country.  But he never for once tried to portray an image of being a man of the masses.  His records would, however, prove that he has always been one.  Ask Joma.  My esteemed columnist, Conrado de Quiros, has criticized Joker for not jumping ship but does party affiliations affect one’s stance in major political issues?  In Joker’s case, it does not.  But people refuse to see that for lack of a bad guy to hate in the telenovela. 

SO going back on track, let me just say that I do want to see change.  But with the voting mentality of our people and the faulty electoral process in our land, I can’t blame my aunt who left her very good post as a municipal health officer to migrate to the Bahamas with her husband who used to be one of the busiest anaesthesiologists in Cebu. 

For as long as Ninoy’s “the Filipino is worth dying for” mantra remains a lip service for the copycats whose balls are not teargas-proof, I do not see a glimmer of light at the end of this tunnel.  Let me see blood and hear bombs and guns instead of poetic speeches that most likely gives Kaka Balagtas a migraine in his grave and I will see at least C in change.  But for as long as D in death remains a letter, I do not think this country will go anywhere. 

For now, GMA is the best person to steer the wheel.  Who’s your bet?  The military junta?  The presidential appointed justices?  Give me a break!

And for these people, I dedicate this song…

Oh what a circus
Oh what a show
Argentina has gone to town
Over the death of an
Actress called Eva Peron
We’ve all gone crazy
Mourning all day and
Mourning all night
Falling over ourselves to
All of the misery right

Oh what an exit
That’s how to go
When they’re ringing
Your curtain down
Demand to be buried
Like Eva Peron
It’s quite a sunset
And good for the country
In a roundabout way
We’ve made the front page of
All the world’s papers today

But who is this Santa Evita?
Why all this howling
Hysterical sorrow?
What kind of goddess
Has lived among us?
How will we ever get by without her?

She had her moments
She had some style
The best show in town
Was the crowd
Outside the Casa Rosada crying
“Eva Peron”
But that’s all gone now
As soon as the smoke from the funeral clears
We’re all gonna see and how
She did nothing for years

You let down your people Evita
You were supposed to have been immortal
That’s all they wanted
Not much to ask for
But in the end you
Could not deliver

Sing you fools
But you got it wrong
Enjoy your prayers because
You haven’t got long
Your queen is dead
Your king is through
And she’s not coming back to you

Show business kept us all alive
Since seventeen october 1945
But the star has gone
The glamour’s worn thin
That’s a pretty bad state
For a state to be in

Instead of government
We had a stage
Instead of ideas
A prima donna’s rage
Instead of help we were
Given a crowd
She didn’t say much
But she said it loud

Sing you fools
But you got it wrong
Enjoy your prayers because
You haven’t got long
Your queen is dead
Your king is through
She’s not coming back to you

Don’t cry for me Argentina
For I am ordinary
Unimportant
And undeserving of such attention
Unless we all are
I think we all are
So share my glory
So share my coffin
So share my glory
So share my coffin

It’s our funeral too

OH WHAT A CIRCUS, from the musical “Evita”
Written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice
(c) 1976 MCA Music Publ. ASCAP