One has to keep an open mind when one looks at the politics of the moment. One has to learn to look at the situation from the Modernist’s position of disinterest. Which position requires one to look at everything both from one’s own bias as well as from the opposite perspective, to look at the narratives presented by those, which would be the targets of one’s critical assessment. And one must start from the premise that for now, it is too early to tell what is going to happen.
Easier by far to tell what would be the weather in the coming days. The signs signal welcome rain. The heat and mugginess has not gone away. But things are way cooler than they were a week ago.
Thankfully, Leni Robredo has been proclaimed winner of the Vice Presidential race despite claims of election fraud via manipulation of the computer system. The computerized voting process has been declared clean and efficient both by Comelec and the Philippine Congress. Still, if fraud is at all possible, we would all welcome evidence to prove it. Even from mere curiosity, we would like to know how it can done, if it can be done at all. The computer is, after all, only a very stupid machine. It will compute consistently. If there is a way to cheat, that way can be demonstrated.
And we certainly look forward to have the three hooded “whistle-blowers” who have claimed fraud to demonstrate how exactly the fraud was done and by whose instruction. Thus far, all they have informed us is hardly evidence but mere speculative testimonies. But if there is anything to their claim, we would like to be informed.
In the meantime, they must be treated as mere conjecture. Conjectures as “mere” as that proclaimed president Duterte’s cabinet will actually work for us. The cast of characters suggests, the proposed cabinet appointees are there merely to identify and validate suspicions of Duterte’s oligarchic base of support in the concluded elections. Special note should be made of “leftists” to be appointed to cabinet posts. So far, the list of appointees-to-be seems immediately worrisome.
Where “leftists” are concerned, we would all worry less if there was at least a better promise of a cessation of hostilities before these appointments are approved by Congress. It would be funny if news of NPA-government encounters came out, even as “leftists” are already serving in government. If that is not a situation of a “conflict of interest,” then nothing else could be.
But even that would not be quite as unnerving as Duterte’s announced decision to allow the burial of Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. This announced plan has been off-putting even for some of Duterte’s staunch supporters in the last elections. Indeed, there is no better word for it than shameful.
And more shameful for the shabby logic that was announced to justify the plan. We should bury him there to allow the nation to “heal” daw. I suppose the current word for it is “move on.” But how can one move on by forgetting such a tragic episode in our past, to sweep it “as it were” under the rug of memory?
And that perhaps is what is meant by “healing” in this particular context. As if the cancer of it will heal just simply by the act of forgetting that it is there. It is a sort of “faith-healing” that we are all, as a nation, are supposed to believe, by faith and faith alone. This is not the healing of scientific medicine. It is, to put it simply, mere opportunistic fakery.
But it is much better not to press it for now. Let history be the final judge. For now, we are supposed to keep silent, or as silent as we can be without betraying ourselves and what we stand for.
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