Dead and deader August 28, 2006
A READER, DAVID MICHAEL SAN JUAN, HAD a very interesting letter last Friday. He wrote: “What cadaver are GMA’s (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s) congressional allies talking about? The impeachment complaint was not a cadaver when it arrived in Congress: It was the most vigorous physical proof of a people fed up with lies, cheating, murders and human rights violations. It became a cadaver only after GMA’s minions killed it.”
I share his sentiments entirely, also in the parts where he thunders forth against the real and plentiful cadavers that are piling up in Nueva Ecija and elsewhere, courtesy of a war meant to stifle protest and keep an illegitimate President in power. This country can remain indifferent to that only at its peril. You keep thinking that fate can happen only to other people, you assure it will happen to you. History is full of lessons there, not least the lesson of the slaughter of the Jews in Nazi Germany, which went without protest, which left Hitler free to do pretty much anything he pleased and which brought ruination upon the country.
San Juan is right about the metaphor of the cadaver. It was Edcel Lagman—whose candidacy I endorsed in the 1990s, thinking (wrongly) he would be as unwavering in his pro-people convictions as his brother, a thought I now most bitterly regret—who kept saying the impeachment bid “was dead on arrival.” He so liked that phrase he kept repeating it again and again, and giving it florid, and lurid, amplifications as he went along. No metaphor could have been falser.
The real metaphor is “Aanhin pa ang damo kung patay na ang kabayo?” Or roughly, “What good is hay when the horse is dead?” Lagman got his roles wrong. The impeachment bid was not a dead thing that got to a living body, it was a living thing that got to a dead body. It was hay that could have resuscitated a famished horse. Alas, the horse was already dead when it got to it.
The impeachment bid is a sure sign the nation is still alive and kicking. It is a vigorous physical proof that voters are still incensed at the thought of having a President they did not vote for and would like to do something about it. Indeed, it is, or was, the most forceful indication the people still hoped they could right wrongs, correct infirmities and obtain fundamental justice by constitutional means. The last is what the majority in Congress has strangled.
No President since 1986 has had her legitimacy unrelentingly questioned. No President has had her right to rule repeatedly rejected by the ruled in survey after survey. Not Cory, notwithstanding that she was not elected into office—the Marcos loyalists insist to this day their bata won the snap elections in 1986. It was good enough that she became President by the direct and compelling hand of sovereign will. Not Fidel Ramos, notwithstanding that Miriam Santiago questioned it then and questions it now—only to refute herself by throwing her support behind someone who blatantly stole the vote. Not Erap, until he convinced people he was more the king of the underworld than the President of the country. And Erap was challenged only for competence, not legitimacy.
In fact, not even GMA herself before May 2004. Most people accepted her ascendancy to the presidency with resignation, granting the constitutionality of it (she was the legitimate successor) and taking comfort in the thought her rule would, thankfully (and wrongly), be short-lived.
No President has had her right to rule questioned unrelentingly, except GMA after May 2004—and Ferdinand Marcos after September 1972. For exactly the same reason: Marcos ruled without a mandate after September 1972, GMA has ruled without a mandate after May 2004. Then as now the protest against the dictators—how else to call illegitimate rulers?—though equally unrelentingly suppressed, was, and is, vibrant, pulsating, alive. Then as now, the institutions that existed to prop up the illegitimate rule were, and are, dead. You can smell the stench from the feasting of the maggots from Aparri to Jolo.
I caught only a few glimpses of the deliberations on impeachment last week. My stomach has limits to what it can take. I never expected much to come from it, but I also never expected so disgusting a sight to be spewed into the public’s face. My first and last impression was that we had fallen right back into Marcos’ martial law. GMA’s Batasan was the same as Marcos’ Batasan, a rubber-stamp body (forget the modifier, “legislative”) dedicated to one and only one purpose: To thwart any effort to unseat a dictator.
That impression was bolstered by the majority doing exactly the same thing that Marcos’ henchmen, many of them lawyers, used to do, which was to quote the law in the most stentorian voices to justify the most lawless atrocity. Or to conscript the law to scuttle justice. Never since martial law have I heard more lawyers toast to the majesty of the Law, the supremacy of the Law, the purity of the Law. Never since martial law have I seen more thugs gang-rape her.
That gang may preen and pose now for the cameras, but all its members have done is to conserve for posterity, a reminder of their role in screwing democracy. All they have done is to demonstrate for a public—which had still hoped it could rely on the law to right wrongs—that Law had been kidnapped by her guardians in a treacherous act of bantay-salakay. All they have done is to prove to the people democracy is dead, their institutions are dead, the dead have come to bury the living.
Marcos did that, Erap did that. They’re gone now, thrown out by a people who defied the law to bring back Law, who went beyond the law to bring back Justice, who looked past the embalmer’s craft to distinguish the living from the dead.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=17556
I share his sentiments entirely, also in the parts where he thunders forth against the real and plentiful cadavers that are piling up in Nueva Ecija and elsewhere, courtesy of a war meant to stifle protest and keep an illegitimate President in power. This country can remain indifferent to that only at its peril. You keep thinking that fate can happen only to other people, you assure it will happen to you. History is full of lessons there, not least the lesson of the slaughter of the Jews in Nazi Germany, which went without protest, which left Hitler free to do pretty much anything he pleased and which brought ruination upon the country.
San Juan is right about the metaphor of the cadaver. It was Edcel Lagman—whose candidacy I endorsed in the 1990s, thinking (wrongly) he would be as unwavering in his pro-people convictions as his brother, a thought I now most bitterly regret—who kept saying the impeachment bid “was dead on arrival.” He so liked that phrase he kept repeating it again and again, and giving it florid, and lurid, amplifications as he went along. No metaphor could have been falser.
The real metaphor is “Aanhin pa ang damo kung patay na ang kabayo?” Or roughly, “What good is hay when the horse is dead?” Lagman got his roles wrong. The impeachment bid was not a dead thing that got to a living body, it was a living thing that got to a dead body. It was hay that could have resuscitated a famished horse. Alas, the horse was already dead when it got to it.
The impeachment bid is a sure sign the nation is still alive and kicking. It is a vigorous physical proof that voters are still incensed at the thought of having a President they did not vote for and would like to do something about it. Indeed, it is, or was, the most forceful indication the people still hoped they could right wrongs, correct infirmities and obtain fundamental justice by constitutional means. The last is what the majority in Congress has strangled.
No President since 1986 has had her legitimacy unrelentingly questioned. No President has had her right to rule repeatedly rejected by the ruled in survey after survey. Not Cory, notwithstanding that she was not elected into office—the Marcos loyalists insist to this day their bata won the snap elections in 1986. It was good enough that she became President by the direct and compelling hand of sovereign will. Not Fidel Ramos, notwithstanding that Miriam Santiago questioned it then and questions it now—only to refute herself by throwing her support behind someone who blatantly stole the vote. Not Erap, until he convinced people he was more the king of the underworld than the President of the country. And Erap was challenged only for competence, not legitimacy.
In fact, not even GMA herself before May 2004. Most people accepted her ascendancy to the presidency with resignation, granting the constitutionality of it (she was the legitimate successor) and taking comfort in the thought her rule would, thankfully (and wrongly), be short-lived.
No President has had her right to rule questioned unrelentingly, except GMA after May 2004—and Ferdinand Marcos after September 1972. For exactly the same reason: Marcos ruled without a mandate after September 1972, GMA has ruled without a mandate after May 2004. Then as now the protest against the dictators—how else to call illegitimate rulers?—though equally unrelentingly suppressed, was, and is, vibrant, pulsating, alive. Then as now, the institutions that existed to prop up the illegitimate rule were, and are, dead. You can smell the stench from the feasting of the maggots from Aparri to Jolo.
I caught only a few glimpses of the deliberations on impeachment last week. My stomach has limits to what it can take. I never expected much to come from it, but I also never expected so disgusting a sight to be spewed into the public’s face. My first and last impression was that we had fallen right back into Marcos’ martial law. GMA’s Batasan was the same as Marcos’ Batasan, a rubber-stamp body (forget the modifier, “legislative”) dedicated to one and only one purpose: To thwart any effort to unseat a dictator.
That impression was bolstered by the majority doing exactly the same thing that Marcos’ henchmen, many of them lawyers, used to do, which was to quote the law in the most stentorian voices to justify the most lawless atrocity. Or to conscript the law to scuttle justice. Never since martial law have I heard more lawyers toast to the majesty of the Law, the supremacy of the Law, the purity of the Law. Never since martial law have I seen more thugs gang-rape her.
That gang may preen and pose now for the cameras, but all its members have done is to conserve for posterity, a reminder of their role in screwing democracy. All they have done is to demonstrate for a public—which had still hoped it could rely on the law to right wrongs—that Law had been kidnapped by her guardians in a treacherous act of bantay-salakay. All they have done is to prove to the people democracy is dead, their institutions are dead, the dead have come to bury the living.
Marcos did that, Erap did that. They’re gone now, thrown out by a people who defied the law to bring back Law, who went beyond the law to bring back Justice, who looked past the embalmer’s craft to distinguish the living from the dead.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=17556
posted by dqfan06 @ 9:34 AM
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