United Against Glo

The Long View : Unity is the only choice

Manuel L. Quezon III
Inquirer News Service

TO DIVIDE, and thus conquer: that is the objective of the administration. To unite, and thus be impregnable: that is the challenge of the times.

A broad coalition of forces is heeding that challenge. The coalition was symbolized by Cory Aquino and Susan Roces' coming together in prayer last Friday night. It has a name: "Bukluran para sa Katotohanan." Its statement of principles will be released today.

Does the broad coalition represent only opportunism, desperation and naked ambition? To reflect on this question is to miss the essential point. This isn't about those arrayed against the President. This is about the President. The President showed cunning when she dared anyone who is without sin to cast the first stone, as Jesus did to the people who were about to stone to death a woman accused of adultery.

What the President forgot is that she is not the Christ. She is in the position of the woman accused of adultery. The closest that we can come to a stand-in for Christ is not the president of a secular state, but the Catholic bishops who said, "if she is accused of adultery, let the charges be investigated." They did not say, "No, she did not commit adultery," or "No, we are morally convinced no adultery took place." They said: "There are too many disturbing details in the allegations, and so some sort of human justice must take its course."

What did the country get? No form of human justice. No truth commission, and quite possibly, no impeachment. What it got, instead, is the woman accused of adultery proclaiming that all are adulterers, which is beside the point.

You would think she never went to school. In school, you can break the rules many times, even cheat many times, but once you get caught, it is irrelevant if the entire class broke the rules with you, or cheated with you, because you're the one who has been caught. You're the one who gets punished. As it is for being caught cutting class, or copying notes, so it is for adultery and any conceivable sin-including the sins that are in a class of their own, because only presidents can commit them.

It boggles the mind that someone accused of committing adultery against the nation-for after all, a president, some say, is wedded to the country-should now be proclaiming that everyone is an adulterer, and even suggesting that adultery be decriminalized. The price of adultery is supposed to be an annulment or divorce. It is not supposed to result in a coronation, much less the transformation of the state into a world-class bordello, which is what the move to institute Charter change is meant to do. But to do so is to be unfair to whores; it reduces all politics to the level of prostitution, where it may be now, but where it ought not to remain. Furthermore, to do so makes certain that politics never rises above the level of whoring, without taking into account that the ones agitating for the prostitutes' rights are not the prostitutes themselves but the pimps. For even if you say that the people are a bunch of whores, what has driven them and keeps them in prostitution? The pimps. It is the pimps who make a whore out of the public for the pleasure of vested interests.

This whole political crisis is about change and a fundamental reality about our society (which thrives on open secrets, but which reserves a curious kind of fury for those caught doing what everyone knew they were doing all along). Is it unfair? The President thinks so; but it is very Filipino.

We all have dirty linen, and no one wants them exposed. But once exposed, they must be washed, and some sort of redemption must be achieved. The religious-minded can reflect on the fact that Jesus kept company with tax collectors and prostitutes, but he was the Christ and his objective was to show no one was beyond redemption. In a political crisis, such as the one taking place, the President has refused to acknowledge culpability and defied every attempt to clear her name. Her supporters say, it is because those prosecuting her are as dirty as she is, or that their objective is not to clear the President's name but to topple her from power.

They forget that it requires neither sainthood nor good character or intentions to be a prosecutor and pursue a prosecution. There are accusations of sanctimoniousness and false piety all around, to be sure. But who, in our government, is expected to be the exemplar of secular virtues, or at the very least, the kind of leadership unafraid to be challenged? Who, of our leaders, must be imbued with a firm and unflinching faith and confidence in the people? Only the President of the Philippines has that burden and responsibility.

The President not only confuses herself with Christ; she thinks she is living in biblical times. The President's supporters see red flags, the faces of disreputable politicians, the lack of teeth in the ranks of the protesting poor, the inability of the clergy to undertake a crusade, the defection of some of the President's own people, and see a motley group of the disgruntled. They should see, instead, a grave crisis in the legitimacy of the President and in the society she exemplifies. She was given so much, and did so little; she could have led so well, instead she leads so badly; she could have given the country hope, but she had so little faith in her people and herself that she has done, and is doing, things that have brought her to the level of the worst of our past leaders. She continues to fatally divide her people. As Oliver Cromwell said to the Long Parliament, "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"