I like to propose something controversial: Let us forgive our president. People are not about to forgive President Aquino, or his sister, or his name. The President has dug his grave many times. Let us forgive him then. He spoke ill of priests before the highest of priests. In a country where a welcome means good words and good feelings, our president decided to be negative about relations of institutions in this country.
The president could have waited for the right time, when the esteemed visitor has left the land. That is not hypocrisy; that is the highest manner we can afford a man who had travelled all the way to this part of the world to condole with our countrymen whose land had been ravaged by a storm.
But let us forgive him for that lack of graciousness.
Then the president opted to attend the inauguration of a plant than wait for the return of the forty-four cops who perished in a battle that has been dubbed a misencounter. Excuses have been given. Explanations have been offered.
But things can be forgiven.
The priorities are very clear, and that the president is for economic development. The Fallen 44 as they are called now are shades of gray for a government that is prone to invent events in black and in white.
There are talks of betrayals.
There are talks of subversion.
There are talks of US intervention.
There are talks of cluelessness even on the side of our strategy and intelligence.
There are talks of plots about bounty hunters.
We can declare all these interpretations as real. But in the end, there is the statistics of forty-four dead in a season of non-war. Unless we are declaring war in Mindanao.
The real war, however, is in our hearts and the heartof a president whose feelings we can never understand. It is also less saddening that the action of the president is a function of his heart than his mind. The heart can somewhat be forgiven but the mind that is of the president that is not rational is pathetic and mad.
But the again maybe he is not mad. Maybe this republic is just unlucky of its politicians. Or of sisters of politicians.
There are talks that Ms. Kris has unfriended or unfollowed some fellow movie celebrities because of their comments against the president. Why am I happy about this development. It is because if Kris unfriends everyone, or at least most of them, then we can gather a critical mass of enlightened showbiz denizens.
It is said that Kris Aquino and Ai-ai de las Alas have reconciled during their visit to the wake of the Fallen 44. That is good for them, but that does not bring any good to the issue that in the times of Peace, almost many government people perished in the land of Maguindanao.
The issue is not about two individuals reconciling but of people unable to reconcile the facts that out there, these forty-four PNP-SAF personnel died. Out there in Maguindanao where in 2009, some 58 perished due to election-related massacre.
The geography of murder prods us to ask what is in the land of Maguindanao that causes these killings? That question, however, is not correct. For every killing in that southern land, there are connections found in the violence and corruption committed in the capital.
The fall of the 44 cannot be removed from the ascent of arrogance and indiscretion in this land. For every absence of the president in a national event the counterpoint feeling is the presence of senseless death. For every death in our nation, other deaths are recalled. In the case of the Fallen 44, the presidential sister comes armed with her own memories of loss.
It is said that when this sister grieved she related the loss of forty-four to her loss of her father. There is no problem with this sharing of one’s grief but the style once more brings us back to that person’s propensity to focus on herself always. That is perhaps the painful side of her comments – the lack of comparability of deaths and the subsequent implications of the loss.
Remove the death of Ninoy and you remove the ascent of the Aquino clan. This is perhaps the sad lesson of that day in August 21. For some reason, the death of Cory Aquino has focused the political choice of people on the son who stood by her mother admirably.
Elixabeth Kubler-Ross, the foremost (I shiver at this label) authority on death) is quoted to have said: “I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes. Sit with them – you don’t even have to talk. You don’t have to do anything…”
The forty-four men are not dying; they are all dead. The president need not prepare a eulogy. He just needed to be there when their bodies were brought down from the plane. No words, no mention of one’s personal loss. Perhaps, a quiet salute is enough.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com
Image credits: Benjo Laygo