Put up or shut up June 19, 2006

THE ADMINISTRATION CONGRESSMEN were quick to pounce on Rodolfo Biazon who told this newspaper last week that the conclusion of his committee was that the last elections were indeed tainted with massive fraud and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was its beneficiary.

Biazon’s statement, Prospero Pichay complained, was just “speculative assessment,” having no evidence to back it up. “These people are just after publicity. If Senator Biazon has nothing sensible to say, he should just shut up.” Exequiel Javier and Marcelino Libanan accused Biazon of practicing “voodoo politics.” And Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye opined: “The good senator is clearly reviving an issue that the public is tired of and wants to leave behind.” And the other congressman who has gotten just as prosperous as Pichay under GMA, Prospero Nograles, demanded to know if Biazon has produced “any piece of legislation” from tenaciously inquiring into the integrity of the last elections.

It’s enough to make you wonder if these people own mirrors, or at least hold one up to their faces. Though I wouldn’t blame them if they did not—the reflection cannot be very flattering, inside and out. They really shouldn’t be addressing these concerns to Biazon, they should be addressing them to themselves.

As credibility goes, who is Biazon and who are variously Pichay, Javier, Libanan, Bunye and Nograles? Biazon is the guy who during Cory’s time—while Pichay was still busy grooming his Elvis Presley hair—got to be known as Mr. Constitutionalist for defending the Constitution against those who very seriously tried to threaten it, specifically the coup plotters who mounted very real coup attempts against the government. Biazon is the guy who, during Erap’s time—while Nograles et al. were busy doing whatever obscure or petty things they were doing then—shone as a senator-cum-impeachment-court-member, never once giving in to outburst or loony-tunes antics (he left that to Miriam Santiago) while asking some pretty astute questions.
I particularly got impressed with him during that trial, and praised him on several occasions. Though not a lawyer, he was at par, if not better, than most of the lawyers in attendance there. He was completely level-headed and proved that no legal gobbledygook would ever put the wool over his eyes. For Pichay et al. to now accuse him of being publicity-hungry for revealing what everyone in this country—except Pichay et al.—already knows, well, it merely draws our attention to who really is so kulang sa pansin in this country. Indeed, more than that, it draws our attention to one profoundly Filipino quality GMA and her cohorts sorely lack, which is the quality of gratefulness. If Biazon had not opened his mouth during the impeachment trial and not been as “publicity hungry” as Pichay accuses him of now, Pichay would still be busy grooming his Elvis Presley hair instead of tormenting the public with his ululations. Erap would never have been ousted and GMA would never have come along to show she could be far worse.

If the issue of GMA’s illegitimacy is something the public is “clearly” already tired of and wants to leave behind, why is Bunye so bothered by it? Why should his colleagues be so incensed by it they want Biazon to shut up? Surely an issue the public is “clearly” already tired of can be safely ignored and left to die a natural death? Surely trying to revive an issue the public is “clearly” already tired of is nothing more than flogging a dead horse?

In fact, as Bunye himself probably knows—although medical history is full of cases where people who keep repeating a lie eventually get to believe it—the only thing that is clear, as borne out by the surveys, is that most Filipinos do not believe GMA is the President. The only thing that is clear, as borne out by the evidence offered by the senses, is that if the public is tired of anyone, it is merely of the current squatter in Malacañang. The only thing that is clear is that if the public is tired of anything, it is that it has not yet found a way to evict her.

What is voodoo, whence “voodoo politics” derives from? In popular mythology at least, it is the first cousin of mumbo jumbo, or the attempt to give falsity truth, fakeness validity, and malevolence normality. Can anything be more voodooistic or “mumbo jumbo-ish” than preventing Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani and Lt. Col. Alex Balutan from appearing in Biazon’s committee and then saying Biazon has no proof? Can anything be more voodooistic or mumbo jumbo-ish than bashing the heads of the people who march in the streets and then saying that unlike Thailand, whose prime minister resigned, we do not have people loudly protesting against GMA in the streets? Can anything be more voodooistic or mumbo jumbo-ish than saying, “God put me here,” when the God referred to speaks with a Visayan accent and keeps saying, “Pipilitin po natin Ma’am”?
Voodoo is also the other name for undiluted evil. Ask the kin of today’s dead if it’s Biazon who practices that kind of politics.

And finally, that idiocy again about congressional inquiries of the sort Biazon has zealously pursued not being “in aid of legislation.” What, truth does not aid legislation? Justice does not aid legislation? Knowing who actually won the last elections and should be governing this country does not aid legislation? Pray, what does aid legislation? But never mind. Just look at the faces of Pichay and company and ask yourself if there is anything in them that can remotely evoke the memory of Solon, the wise Greek leader who bequeathed a system of laws to his nation, or can remotely conjure the hallowed title, “lawmaker.”

One is tempted to tell them, “Put up or shut up.” But just “Shut up” will do. We’ve put up with them too long already.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=5405