BAGUIA
Many of the Presidents most ardent supporters have appended to his nickname the word “Tatay,” Filipino for father, such that he is to them “Tatay Digong.”
In the movie “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” one of the characters utters a line that has become memorable to youngsters: “We accept the love we think we deserve.”
If we take that line as a criterion for love or substitutes thereof that we allow into our lives, the Filipino, then, have very low criteria for judging who should be honored as a nation’s father.
The people, too, also do not consider many virtues essential or important to being a national father figure.
A good father is usually a point of unity for the family, a defender of life.
The children-figures of father-figure Digong, however, cheer his most divisive statements, whether they malign a religion or pronounce hopeless persons with substance abuse disorders.
A good father knows how to listen carefully to all his children.
Digong’s inability or refusal to listen to persons with alternative opinions and people’s acceptance of such shows that the nation is content with a kind of father-figure who is prejudiced against members of his family.
A good father is a consistent and steady provider.
Let the state of the nation’s coffers, its being mired in debt with huge interest rates, and the skyrocketing of prices of commodities so that many could ill afford even the most basic ones needed to survive be a testimony against the providential abilities of Digong the dad.
A good father protects his household. Is Digong really protecting our national patrimony or are portions of our territory in effect being given away to a superpower wannabe that wants to have exclusive hold over resources that are ours, not theirs?
A good father shows his children how to treat women right? Digong, in contrast, if it were up to him, would not nominate a woman to the highest judicial post in the land.
What does that say to the mothers and sisters in the family that is the nation? Once upon a time, we had a leader who thought that women cannot be anything but domestic.
He had no pretensions to being a national father. He called himself a constitutional authoritarian.
That’s dictator in plain language.
There is nothing paternal about “Tatay” in “Tatay Digong.”
The moniker only exposes the low esteem for and idea of fatherhood many Filipinos have.
For them strictness, firmness, an uncompromising disposition, swagger, and machismo complete with cursing and a boy’s flair for making light of even the gravest matters qualifies someone to be a father figure.
The national search for a father is misdirected towards the political realm. Our good Lord tells us we have only one Father, and He is heavenly. The name “Father” is sacred.
“Calling God ‘Abba, Father’ is a cry of the heart, a prayer welling up from our innermost beings,” Nouwen said.
“It has nothing do with naming God but everything to do with claiming God as the source of who we are.
This claim does not come from any sudden insight or acquired conviction; it is the claim that the Spirit of Jesus makes in communion with our spirits. It is the claim of love.”
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