THE GOOD. THE BAD AND THE UGLY was the title of a popular 1966 Spaghetti Cowboy Movie which gave Hollywood westerns a run for their money. I tried to mime current Philippine events for musings purposes as the The DRY, THE FUNNY AND THE SERIOUS. Why so? The playful mind sometimes can be better than infantile yet satirical in events that tickle and later numb the mind. During the distant past and recent weeks, Ph or PNOY country had been witnessed to memorable events that may well be topically divided into the DRY AND BORING, THE FUNNY AND THE SERIOUS.
The Dry and Boring. There is nothing to write here if Philippine media (print, online, TV and radio) content per se is merely read, seen or heard; and Not spinned, stretched, cogitated and or digested by readers. Life with media or even media with life as abstract entities it seems all year round is never dry and boring. News in the Philippines never die in boredom, they just fade away and are replaced by salacious ones.
FUNNY just funny fiction based on a possible true story. A young struggling and new lawyer with wife and a grade school son was asked by the Mrs. to pass by the Quinta Market (in Quiapo) to buy galunggong ulam for their supper and breakfast. It was the usual low notarization fees as income for that day so Mr. honest lawyer wracked his brain to get as much galunggong for his money but cannot decide how many galunggong to buy for supper and for breakfast the next day. Should it be four or twice as much like eight galunggongs to make it four galunggongs for supper and another four for breakfast. The honest woman fish vendor with wisdom of her years advising fish customers explain the situation to Mr. lawyer. Buying four galunggong for three people’s supper and breakfast is not enough . For each meal only one each for Mr. and Mrs. and nothing for the son. So the fish vendor advised the lawyer: Four is short and eight is too much so why not buy six galunggongs so that the whole family can have two galunggongs each for supper and for breakfast.
What is funny is galunggongs are sold by the kilo and not by number of pieces. And that galunggong with plain rice or as sinangag is a better meal with ginisang bagoong. What perhaps is no longer funny is the presidential tenure of office in the Philippines. Pundits, lawmakers, constitutionalists, delegates, professors or what evers as logicians might have reckoned: four years in office is two short for a good president while a re-election for another four to make eight years is too long for a bad president. If that is four is short for good, and 8 is long for bad, why can’t it be vice versa thus 4 is short for bad and 8 is long for good? What about eight years for a good president? What about four years only for a bad president who won’t get re-elected? Being negative about it, that is if the dice is loaded against good presidents, better then not to give any villain the whole nine yards.
Whether good or bad, It is wet market wisdom to give any president not too much or too little time. Eh? Six years it is then to be mandated by the constitution. On record and by experience, it is up for the bad ones to make it ten or twenty lucrative years. In a democracy it is the people that decides and get rid of bad presidents not constitutional carpenters. You find that in the USA where a good one gets another term and a bad one just good riddance.
Even with our “ favorite things” we don’t always copy them or theirs, of the United States. We copied their four years presidency, then by our wisdom we dropped it and adopted six-year terms. Perhaps not knowing fully why. The recent tenurial history of US Presidents might tell us the smart-alecky answer as to why they stuck to their four years with re-election. Their system of governance dominated by a long lasting two-party system may have set the continuity of a distinguishable pattern of breakdown and rehab, messing might take eight years followed by repairing for eight years with the Republicans and Democrats alternating.
A result might be a theoretical high equilibrium Political Economy every 16 years for the country. Or it could be disastrous too if eight bad Republican years is followed by another bad eight Democrat years. That could be a straight path to Third world phenomenon where the more politicians try to be different—by having multiple political parties—the more they become the same over the years. Filipino constitutional carpenters had thought four years is too short for a good president while the Americans believe that four years is just right for bad presidents to be cut short and sent to oblivion.
Any which way they go, the USA and the Philippines as models for selection of their presidents redefines, este enriches the unsavory meaning of politics to wit: Politics is the Art of the Possible; All is Fair in Love and Politics—into something like Politics is the Quest for Sameness By Being Different. If politics becomes the way to pursue all their sought after ends, then democracy, socialism, communism, totalitarianism and theism are likely to end up being the same after years of trying to be different. This paragraph have its shame; philosophizing the mundane: pare-parehong lahat yan, weder-weder lang yan. In the ultimate analysis IT IS NOT POLITICS, to borrow Milton Freidman’s words: “the root is man the cause is man.” The Politician is man, eh?
What is boring and sometimes funny but a thing of serious metaphor is that Philippine Public Administration had started like a husband and wife unisex team with vows to raise a decent family starting strongly before as Nationalistas and Liberals like dyed in the wool political parties until the call of the sensuous wild queridos and queridas titilliating both partners with the highs of infidelity that eventually mucked up national politics. The socio-political eco-system now have all sorts of pseudo-political parties driven by ideologues, charlatans, plunderers, catalyst big business and snake medicine opportunists i.e. if any of them is not a modern day Don Quixote de la Mancha. The Don’s alalay Sancho Panza even then believed and supported the road to good intentions could be full of hallucinations.
THE SERIOUS and sickening. Just in the news these days are journalists’ favorite things that can be overblown into a theory of a prevailing culture of hypocrisy. For example, the guards assigned to two powerful and rich accused of heinous crimes do not want to part with their two detainees if possible because of their exemplary behavior as prisoners aside from the abundance of benefits like food, etc frequently brought in by visiting relatives and friends (see BALITA Dec 16-31 page 48). Any sane way to look at it, it is not right for the visitors to corrupt the guards in that Christian way, in the same respect that the guards should not debase their duty by accepting gifts in any form.
More sickening perhaps is when what is supposed to be HELL on earth has become HEAVEN ON EARTH in the news. It’s blasphemous when authorities make extra money for subsistence or for their extravagant life from criminals they have sworn to punish and put away. The Bilibid shame in the holiday news looks and sounds so small, microscopic or even inconsequential but what recently was common suspicion was proven stark reality in the National Penitentiary. Select prisoners had been found enjoying a home life and amenities inside the prison not enjoyed by the ordinary rich Filipinos in their condos and apartments.
The Bilibid shame is still mere dark shadows beneath becalmed waters and not yet the tip of an iceberg that has metastasized. When the number one prisoner is allowed Christmas furlough because the Pope is visiting the country and not because it is explicitly allowed by law constitute seminal idea for a theory on culture of hypocrisy. Metastasis is when malignancy had infected the rich and powerful sociopaths, lawmakers, justices and judges, lawyers, policemen, correctional bureaucrats, prison guards, businessmen, and altogether, also implicating the members of their immediate families. Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere (social cancer) to say the most is only benign tumour in comparison. ***
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