Way to go September 6, 2006

I MADE IT a point to watch the US Open last Sunday night up to the wee hours of Monday morning. I had inkling it would be Andre Agassi's last game. It was.

Agassi, the "old man" of tennis at 36, ravaged by back pains and other afflictions, had said the US Open would be his last. What he didn't say -- and what the tennis world waited with bated breath to know -- was how he would go. As the last couple of weeks would show, in a blaze of glory. Well, pretty much so. As the match last Sunday would also show, tinged somewhat by T.S. Eliot's famous presentiment about worlds ending not with a bang but with a whimper.

His first two rounds in the Open -- against Andre Pavel and Marcos Baghdatis -- are now headed for the books as instant classics. Both were five setters, which had him rising to the top of his game, defying in the end time itself. But they would take their toll on him, too. He had cortisone injections in his back to relieve the pain after both matches and could barely move after the second one. I personally didn't think he wouldn't be around for the third round -- all the reports said he was in bad shape. His own father thought so. He was right.

In the end, all it took was an unexceptional opponent, one ranked past 100, Benjamin Becker, to knock him off. It was almost torture watching him play last Sunday night, except that like most everyone in the audience, I too was willing him past reason and the laws of the physical universe to do it just one more time. He hobbled about, moved woodenly like the weight of the world was on him, and endured the pain -- the physical one of a hurting back and the mental one of not being able to do what not too long ago he could. I hoped at one point he would quit the match, there would have been no shame in it. But he kept on. Before the game, he had told solicitous friends: "If I wanted to quit, I would have done that a long time ago. I didn't come here to quit."

That's the story of his life, and the one thing that drove me to follow his career. As talents go, his contemporary Pete Sampras was by far the more formidable player, winning more majors during his time than anybody else. And compared with current players, Roger Federer is by far the even more awesome, a veritable Achilles with virtually no Achilles heel.

What sets Agassi apart -- and which reminds us about the key element, or deepest secret, for success in any game, including the game of life -- is character.

I became a minor Agassi fan when he came on to the game as a youth, long hair, denim shorts and a cockiness that proclaimed the dawning of rock-and-roll in tennis. I shared his frustration during his early years when the promise of a rock-and-roll tennis demigod seemed to turn sour. And I reveled with him when he persevered and went on to win one major after another, except the French -- the one thing that eluded Sampras and the one thing that eludes Federer now.

But none of that really tested his mettle. What did was the tailspin his career went into in the latter half of the 1990s. For some inexplicable reason, his game dove in 1997. Some of the matches he played at that time completely justified how he would describe the sensation later: "It was an embarrassment just being on the court." I saw some of those games. He turned from Beatles to beat-less overnight, being routinely humbled by humble players, or those in the lower rungs of the ladder panting from the exertion of the climb. He himself would end up there, tumbling from one of the top five players in the world to a truly humble and humbled 141st. It didn't help that he started playing in the minor leagues, which made him look even more pathetic. For all practical purposes, he was washed up.

But slowly, miraculously, by dint of sheer will, he pulled himself back up. I've seen magnificent comebacks. Frank Sinatra did it in the 1970s; John Travolta did it in the 1990s. But talents in singing and acting are not easily ravaged by time, merely by public taste. Talents in sports are. Sports are one field that time rules tyrannically. Agassi came back, and came back more magnificently, or dramatically, than others.

He began the climb in 1998 and, though he didn't win any major that year, served notice he was back on track. He came roaring back the next year. By summer, he fought his way through the French Open and went on to the finals. The only thing that lay between him and redemption was Andrei Medvedev, a young man who was in turn seeking respect. At the outset, the quest for respect seemed superior to the quest for redemption. Medvedevwon the first two sets handily.

Then -- as Agassi had done with his life over the past couple of years -- he turned things around. He battled Medvedev furiously over the next two rounds and tied the match. Leading 5-4 in the deciding set and with match point, he whacked the ball to the other side of the court to see the return sail past him. Game, set, match. Adversity, struggle, triumph. Rise, fall, rise again. It was more than that, he had finally won the one major that had eluded him. It was that he had finally won the greatest battle of his life-the one he had fought with himself. He wept uncontrollably as he kissed the trophy that was handed to him that day.

It was that same scene last Sunday night, though one filled with more poignancy. He couldn't speak for a while, he choked on his words as he attempted to say something while the world stood (literally) on its feet, tears streaming down the faces of many of his fans as well. Words could not convey the depth of his thankfulness for them and the depth of his sadness at leaving them. Well, words weren't really needed. Everything that needed to be said had already been said.

Way to go, Andre. Way to go, world.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=19198

Expectations September 5, 2006

I'M GLAD many Filipinos have sat up and taken notice of Arvind Kejriwal, the Indian tax collector who has gotten the Indian government to give a full accounting of many of its projects. He has done this by getting the people to invoke the Right of Information Act passed by government in 2002 to compel such an accounting. Over the weekend, several people sent me text messages quoting a thought by Kejriwal on this subject: "Right to information is about truth coming out in public domain. It is about transparency. It is about ethical governance."

It's not hard to see why so many Filipinos would latch on to those words. Right to information, truth coming out in the public domain, transparency, ethical governance -- those are things we have not got. Or those are things we no longer have. Indeed, the entire Ramon Magsaysay Awards this year are a humongous irony and take on the aspect of a satirical barb on the host country. Those awards are given to people who have advanced the cause of democracy in various ways in Asia. The last person it can be given to is the self-proclaimed leader -- a monumental contradiction in terms in any democracy -- of the host country.

Can we replicate Kejriwal's feat here? Well, we can always try but we have a steeper mountain to climb, courtesy of our own stupidity -- we ourselves have built that mountain by our unwillingness to protest iniquity when it was still a molehill. Today, look at the obstacles that lie in our path in demanding right to information, truth coming out in the public domain, transparency and ethical governance: We have a Joc-Joc Bolante being aided and abetted by government in hiding the truth from the public. (And Raul Gonzalez complains about Bishop Antonio Tobias giving aid and sanctuary to rebels, warning him no one is above the law!) We have public officials contemptuously scorning Senate summonses. Hell, we even have Virgilio Garcillano contemplating running for public office. The only good thing that can be said about it is that if he does become a congressman he'll be in perfect company with Joe de V, Edcel Lagman, the two Prosperos, et al. Birds of the same feather suck together.

But all these notwithstanding, Kejriwal's project still has a lesson to impart to us. It is that -- no small reminder given that we pride ourselves quite ironically with inventing People Power -- that the real power in any country is the people. Tyranny is only as good as the people are willing to be slaves. Good governance is only as good as the people demand to be governed well.

Specifically, Kejriwal's project highlights the incalculable power of public expectation. Expectation is what makes things happen because it carries with it an implicit demand that those things happen. That's easy to see in everyday life. You go out onto the streets expecting vehicles to keep to their lanes, which is how it is in the developed countries, and you will have vehicles keeping to their lanes. In Hawaii in particular, people expect vehicles not to blow their horns other than in dire emergencies, so that what you have are streets free of noise pollution. You blow your horn there for no good reason and everybody stares at you and reduce you to the status of a worm.

On the other hand, you expect every other vehicle to refuse to fall in line but instead seize the opposite lane to try to get ahead of the others, and that is exactly what will happen. It will become the norm. Which is how things are in our streets. There is no law out there other than the law of the jungle.

Public expectation makes things happen because it is backed up by public indignation. By itself that is already a sanction: You reduce the person who does not conform to that expectation to the status of a worm. But more than that, you bring to bear more practical sanctions: You compel the law to exact its toll on lawbreakers. Law itself is only as good as it has the backing of public expectation and indignation to enforce it. No public expectation, no law. No indignation, no enforcement.

What is true of that simple case is true of complex cases as well. You expect, or learn to expect, that presidents will lie, cheat and steal, and presidents will lie, cheat and steal. You expect, or learn to expect, that candidates who steal the elections will prevent officials from appearing before the Senate or the courts, will bribe Congress to kill any effort to bring the theft to light, will hide the co-conspirators in the cheating in the US and elsewhere, and candidates will cheat. You expect, or learn to expect, that you have no civil rights under a democracy, not even the right to life, never mind liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and you will end up a collateral damage in Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan's line of fire. Which is exactly what we have today.

On the other hand, you expect, or learn to expect, along with Kejriwal's favorite people, that you have every right to see that the hard-earned money taken from you in taxes is used to make your life easier and not to make Pidal richer, and you will compel government to give you an accounting of it. You expect, or learn to expect, that you have a right to talk and assemble freely without Palparan coming in to help you pursue happiness in the next life, and you will stop a government that exists at your sufferance from murdering you. You expect, or learn to expect, that you deserve democracy and not dictatorship, and you will get democracy and not dictatorship.

Government is only as righteous or wicked as the people expect, and therefore demand, it to be so. You expect to be treated as a human being, you will be treated as a human being. You expect to be treated as cattle, you will be slaughtered.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=18989

Command responsibility September 4, 2006

IN 1996, A COUPLE OF YEARS AFTER JUDGE Manuel Real of Honolulu found Marcos guilty of the torture and killing of thousands of prisoners during martial law, the Marcoses appealed the case in Pasadena, California. Their lawyer challenged Real’s basis for finding Marcos guilty on the ground that Real had given the jury questionable instructions. Specifically, Real had instructed the jury that they could find Marcos guilty if: “(1) Marcos directed, ordered, conspired with, or aided the military in torture, summary execution and ‘disappearance’ or (2) if Marcos knew of such conduct by the military and failed to use his power to prevent it.”

Marcos’ lawyer argued that American law does not support the second condition, and that “no international law decision ... has ever imposed liability upon a foreign official on those grounds.”

The Pasadena court denied the appeal, saying those two conditions of “command responsibility” are in fact well borne out both by US and international law. It cited the US Supreme Court ruling on Yamashita, thus:

“[T]he … charge is (the failure of the) petitioner as an army commander to control the operations of the members of his command by ‘permitting them to commit extensive and widespread atrocities’ ... [T]he law of war presupposes that its violation is to be avoided through the control of the operations of war by commanders who are to some extent responsible for their subordinates ... [P]rovisions [of international law] plainly imposed on petitioner who, at the time specified, was military governor of the Philippines, as well as commander of the Japanese forces, an affirmative duty to take such measures as were within his power and appropriate in the circumstances to protect prisoners of war and the civilian population.”

If the Melo Commission is serious about its work, all it has to do is go by this luminous precedent. Forget summoning GMA’s minions, summon GMA (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) herself to answer for the “extensive and widespread atrocities” being wreaked by her troops.

Congress, of course, was quick to exonerate her from blame in this respect. That was one of the issues brought against her by those seeking her impeachment. Well, we have a saying in this country, which is: The hardest person to wake up is the one who is pretending to be asleep. Might as well try reviving someone who has passed out in drunken stupor, you’ll have better chances.

The pro-GMA majority argued to a man or woman that there was nothing to connect GMA to the killings. Of course, you won’t find any written or verbal order given by her directly to Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan to torture and summarily execute suspected NPA rebels—after the “Hello Garci” tapes she would have become more wary of expressing her incontinent desires carelessly. But then you won’t find the same thing either from Marcos. He never explicitly ordered his generals verbally or in writing to torture, summarily execute, or erase from the face of the earth any trace of suspected rebels. That is something you might expect Erap to do, had he been inclined to rule forever by force—and thank God he was not. But that is not something you might expect from Marcos or GMA.

Thank God, however, as Judge Real’s ruling reminds us—a ruling GMA herself has gone by, as seen by her earnest efforts to extract from the Marcos estate the sums demanded by Real for the indemnification of the torture victims—there is another criterion for liability or culpability in atrocity. That is the full knowledge that the atrocity is happening and, while having the power to do so, the failure or unwillingness to stop it.

Does GMA know the atrocity is happening?

Are you kidding me? At the very least, the killings—of activists and journalists—began long before she unleashed her “war against the NPA.” The corpses were piling up, which had begun to alarm both the international journalistic and human rights community. The “war,” an epically cynical one launched against an enemy that posed little threat physically; indeed, that had been GMA’s own allies in her quest for the presidency—she ardently conspired with them to oust Erap, a fact that by Palparan’s current definition of the “enemy” should easily land her in that category—is merely meant to give the killings a quasi-legal mantle.

At the very most, as that last part suggests, Palparan has never hidden his homicidal bent. He has boasted about it, defying his critics, who are almost by definition people who still believe in democracy. He has openly advocated death to the enemy. He has said publicly that if you get shot in the company of a suspected NPA rebel, that’s your fault. He has said airily that he does not see any difference between party-list and communist, they are all the same. That is a recipe for a bloodbath. No, that is an engraved invitation to genocide.

Has GMA tried to stop this?

Are you kidding me even more? She has not told Palparan that in a democracy, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, she has told Palparan to keep up the good work. She has not told Palparan that in a democracy there is a distinction between combatant and non-combatant, soldier and civilian, people who believe in Marx and people who take up arms to build a communist state; she has told Palparan, he (like she) is one piece of work. She has not told Palparan that in a democracy the principle is not to kill first and apologize later or not at all (how can she?), she has held him up for emulation before the nation.

What the Melo Commission needs is not wit, it is will. The proof is in plain sight. The question is not whether or not that commission has the wile or guile to find it. The question is whether or not that commission has the eyes, or balls, to see it.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=18804

Naked truth August 31, 2006

THAT was an awesome thing the University of the Philippines (UP) students did last Monday in answer to Raul Gonzalez's remarks about what UP had become. It was the perfect response to it. No, more than that, it was the most poetic response to it.

Last weekend, Gonzalez derided UP for having become the breeding ground of destabilizers and the lacking-in-breeding ground of exhibitionists. Well, he didn't say the latter, he doesn't have the imagination for it, what he said was that it was a place where naked people ran around. He said UP students should really be thankful their government was spending to educate them.

The kids responded by having 15 of their fellows run around the campus in their pristine state in a special edition of the Oblation Run, traditionally done around Christmas. Who says you can't have Christmas in August? The Run wasn't just meant to regale the audience, many of whom were women, with the truth about the body electric, it meant to expose to them the truth about the body politic.

At the very least, the kids did bring out some naked truths the justice secretary can no longer see. Chief of them is whom they owed for their education. As University Student Council chair Juan Paolo Alfonso pointed out, it was the people who were paying for their education, not government. Taxpayers' money is money that belongs to the people, not to Raul Gonzalez or his boss, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Tyrants, petty or otherwise, do have a way of forgetting that pristine truth. Tyrants, petty or otherwise, have a way of thinking that money entrusted to them by the people to be used for the people is theirs to dispense with as they like, or keep for themselves.

At the very most, the kids did bring out some naked truths their so-called elders-and-betters -- no, pretty nearly the rest of their countrymen -- can no longer see. Chief of them is that we have been plunged back right into martial law and are compelled to fight with the same weapons the previous generation used to fight martial law. The Oblation Run arose in much the same circumstances as today, the kids protesting epic fakeness. It began one fine day in 1977 when five students ran naked in the campus to promote the play, "Hubad na Bayani" ("Naked Hero"), satirizing Ferdinand Marcos. "Hubad na Bayani," of course, sounds like "Huwad na Bayani" ("Fake Hero"), which was what Marcos was. We had a fake hero then, we have a fake president now, both without a mandate to rule. The kids stripped the fakeness from Marcos' medals then, the kids are stripping the fakeness from Arroyo's votes now.

If I recall right, UP went on to become a beacon of light in a time of darkness during martial law. The student paper UP Collegian in particular rushed in where the national newspapers feared to tread, and the UP Law Center went boldly on where others had not gone before. If the UP people can resurrect that role in these new times of darkness and despair, may all my prayers to the God of (Poetic) Justice go with them.

Nakedness is the perfect metaphor, or to borrow a phrase from T.S. Eliot, the perfect "objective correlative," to draw attention to our condition today. Democracy is transparent, tyranny is opaque. Democracy is plain to see, tyranny hides behind subterfuges. Democracy is naked, tyranny wraps itself up in folds of deception.

Democracy is beautiful in all its nakedness, tyranny is ugly in all its cover-ups.

The guardians of Filipino morals, who bristle at the sight of nakedness in movies and elsewhere, including real life, will of course rail against this as an affront to Good Manners and Right Conduct. They are probably the same people who railed against Theresa Pangilinan for heckling her school's guest of honor, who happened to be Arroyo, during their graduation. Well, I've said my piece about Pangilinan. She at least was a genuine graduate, the speaker was a fake president. She at least had earned her degree by hard work, the speaker had won her title by Garci.

The Oblation Run may very well be the shock treatment this country needs to strip it of the indifference and cynicism that now cover its heart like calluses and its soul like barnacles. At the very least, it shows up a justice secretary who finds shocking the sight of kids displaying their formidable assets to a giggling world, but finds perfectly just andrespectable the sight, or sound, of a candidate plotting with "a Comelec official" to kidnap a poll watcher who is protesting fraud. It shows up a justice secretary who finds outrageous the sight of kids parading before the world the things they ought to be covering up, but finds perfectly lawful and godly the sight of Virgilio Garcillano, Joc-joc Bolante, and all the other officials the Senate has been trying to summon in vain, covering up the things they ought to be parading before the world.

But never mind the justice secretary. He doesn't need help from outside to show himself up, he does a good job of it himself every time he opens his mouth. Mind only ourselves or what we have become, a people who have lost the capacity to weep and gnash our teeth at the sight of so much death and dying. What is truly indecent, the sight of naked bodies traipsing gleefully in the groves of academe or the sight of bodies caked in blood and being eaten by the worms in the paddies of Nueva Ecija and Bulacan provinces, courtesy of one Jovito Palparan? What is truly reprehensible, the spectacle of kids shedding off clothes in protest of iniquity to the laughter and titillation of the world, or the spectacle of a usurper's mindless minions shedding blood in protest of sheer life to build a garrison state from a mountain of bleached bone?

Democracy is resplendently robed in all its nakedness. Tyranny is obscenely naked in all its finery.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=18149