excerpt from the philippine inquirer on
panlilio:
"...he is the one public official malacanang sought
desperately to get rid of. therefore, by the law of opposites, which says dark
hates light and thieves hate honest men, he is the one public official who most
deserves to be in malacanang...the elections next year offer the enormous
potential of being a battle between good and evil...the situation in the country
today makes the elections more than a purely political exercise, it makes them a
life-and-death moral choice. at least among the current presidentiables,
panlilio has the potential to be so...not becuase he is a priest/religious but
because he is an honest man, he is a decent man, he is a simple man."
this entry is not a political commentary, nor is this an attempt to attack the words of a respectable writer whom, despite our disparities in political views, I highly admire.
moreover, i have no comment on panlilio, or on any political figure looking to get a piece of the presidential seat for that matter. i have completely lost touch with philippine politics (except the kind that happens in my office of which i am a central figure) and therefore am in no position at all to make a credible judgment.
although i must admit the shock i felt when i found out that the elections next year has already reached theatric, "matter-of-life-and-death," "good-versus-evil" proportions. have i really been away that long? has the saga that is the philippine politics become an epic journey of a hero's quest to fight the evil monster and save the faraway kingdom from eternal damnation? ooohhh...my kind of entertainment. popcorn please, louise.
so panlilio, as they say, is an honest, decent, and simple man--but so are my parents, so is our parish priest, so is my fourth grade CVE teacher, so is that CTA driver who always, despite the deadly, penetrating morning chill, manages to say "how 'ya doin' today, missy?" with a smile whenever i get on his bus, so is like half the people i know. yes, i'm fully aware that one by one nations are descending into chaos as threats on world economy increases exponentially. but news flash, everyone: we haven't run out of good people. it might be hard to believe but we haven't reached that point yet. we haven't run out of honest, decent, and simple people. so what makes panlilio "the chosen one"?
honest, decent, simple--really, of about a million positive adjectives in the english dictionary, is this the best set we can come up with to describe an ideal presidentiable? i'm not saying that it's bad, it's just scary. has our traumatic political and electoral history already caused us to develop a delicious sense of absurd, that the norm in terms of "being human" has already become the extraordinary, the extreme, the extinct?
and what the hell is a moral choice? what makes it different from all the other kinds of choices? is it a choice that you choose because/when/if you're a moral person? is there also a morally incorrect/immorally correct choice? who gets to decide the parameters of morality? before i proceed with my argument, i just want to know if there are any other kinds of choice that i should be informed about (e.g. logical choice, physiological choice, emotional choice, drunken choice, ladies' choice...) i mean, come on, making a choice is hard by itself, why do we have to complicate things by categorizing "choices" by which faculty of the brain gets activated when you make it?
this reminds me of the perennial dilemma of today's teens in cheesy chick flicks: "i don't know what to do, my heart says this, but my head says that." the funny thing is, situations in which this line is used usually have a common denominator: forbidden love affair. first and foremost, how could you relate schizophrenic tendencies with your sheer indecisiveness? and second, if a relationship must be kept a secret, then don't you think that you shouldn't be in it? mind you, that's not my heart talking, that's my common sense. then again, the latter is beside the point.
apparently, a lot of people believe that in real life, hearts have occupations other than its anatomical profession. some people confuse their blurred perception of right and wrong with their brain's natural process of decision making, in which alternatives are weighed until a satisfactory course of action has been made. when you make a choice, you reason with yourself, considering all stakes, ambiguities, realities, biases, values, needs, preferences, physical senses, and maybe even our emotions. and when you've arrived at a decision, you don't categorize it based on one variable alone, because a choice is the end result, the bi-product, the sum total of your brain's long and winding arithmetic operation.
and so when you're at the pitchfork and are asked which road to take, you don't say i'm taking this path as a daughter, then i'll go back and re-route as a totally different persona. you don't say this is my choice when i'm drunk because during which i'm allowed to be stupid. and you definitely don't say that i'm voting for this person because i feel like being morally upright today. that's not how it works, because you are what you choose. in short, you don't justify a decision or a choice by giving it a name or giving it its own category. when you make it--regardless of the formula you used or which of your two heads did the thinking on most parts--it's yours and you should own up to it.
so panlilio, as they say, is an honest, decent, and simple man--but so are my parents, so is our parish priest, so is my fourth grade CVE teacher, so is that CTA driver who always, despite the deadly, penetrating morning chill, manages to say "how 'ya doin' today, missy?" with a smile whenever i get on his bus, so is like half the people i know. yes, i'm fully aware that one by one nations are descending into chaos as threats on world economy increases exponentially. but news flash, everyone: we haven't run out of good people. it might be hard to believe but we haven't reached that point yet. we haven't run out of honest, decent, and simple people. so what makes panlilio "the chosen one"?
honest, decent, simple--really, of about a million positive adjectives in the english dictionary, is this the best set we can come up with to describe an ideal presidentiable? i'm not saying that it's bad, it's just scary. has our traumatic political and electoral history already caused us to develop a delicious sense of absurd, that the norm in terms of "being human" has already become the extraordinary, the extreme, the extinct?
and what the hell is a moral choice? what makes it different from all the other kinds of choices? is it a choice that you choose because/when/if you're a moral person? is there also a morally incorrect/immorally correct choice? who gets to decide the parameters of morality? before i proceed with my argument, i just want to know if there are any other kinds of choice that i should be informed about (e.g. logical choice, physiological choice, emotional choice, drunken choice, ladies' choice...) i mean, come on, making a choice is hard by itself, why do we have to complicate things by categorizing "choices" by which faculty of the brain gets activated when you make it?
this reminds me of the perennial dilemma of today's teens in cheesy chick flicks: "i don't know what to do, my heart says this, but my head says that." the funny thing is, situations in which this line is used usually have a common denominator: forbidden love affair. first and foremost, how could you relate schizophrenic tendencies with your sheer indecisiveness? and second, if a relationship must be kept a secret, then don't you think that you shouldn't be in it? mind you, that's not my heart talking, that's my common sense. then again, the latter is beside the point.
apparently, a lot of people believe that in real life, hearts have occupations other than its anatomical profession. some people confuse their blurred perception of right and wrong with their brain's natural process of decision making, in which alternatives are weighed until a satisfactory course of action has been made. when you make a choice, you reason with yourself, considering all stakes, ambiguities, realities, biases, values, needs, preferences, physical senses, and maybe even our emotions. and when you've arrived at a decision, you don't categorize it based on one variable alone, because a choice is the end result, the bi-product, the sum total of your brain's long and winding arithmetic operation.
and so when you're at the pitchfork and are asked which road to take, you don't say i'm taking this path as a daughter, then i'll go back and re-route as a totally different persona. you don't say this is my choice when i'm drunk because during which i'm allowed to be stupid. and you definitely don't say that i'm voting for this person because i feel like being morally upright today. that's not how it works, because you are what you choose. in short, you don't justify a decision or a choice by giving it a name or giving it its own category. when you make it--regardless of the formula you used or which of your two heads did the thinking on most parts--it's yours and you should own up to it.
so when a person does not give panlilio the highest regard, it doesn't necessarily follow that that person is immoral. besides, the concept of morality alone entails a long debate; we should be careful in handling heavy words like that. i do not doubt the goodness in people, nor do i doubt panlilio's capacity to lead. but it takes an attitude greater than simplicity, decency, and honesty to lead a third-world country out of its shithole. if anything, a choice--whether it involves putting a person in power or not--should be, more than anything else, an "informed" one, one that doesn't alienate all the other variables in favor of one. and only when people choose someone who they truly and wholeheartedly believe to be, to the best of their knowledge, someone capable of change as their leader, that a choice is, for me, a moral one, regardless of who that person is.
and unless people start educating themselves instead of listening to prophetic, albeit well-written, expressions, our story as people of the philippines, like that of those tragic heroes in all those great pieces of literature, will forever be an epic failure.
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