Roy “Roylu” Lumagbas, native Cebuano performance artist now resides in Bolivia. He came home for a short visit and quite by coincidence did a performance at UP Cebu Fabrication Laboratory (FabLab) on June 28.
His performance, “Sipilyo,” has Roylu dressed in a plaid shirt. He stands in front of the audience and begins brushing his teeth with red toothpaste. It drips like blood from his mouth as he picks up a megaphone and begins to mouth the words “Patya!” A short discussion followed after the performance where the question was first asked: Was the performance about Pres. Rodrigo Duterte who was sworn into office that same day? Roylu’s answer:
Yes and no.
Yes, there is no denying that President Duterte advocates killing criminals. Forcefully, always and even with a kind of glee. The more of them the better. Slaughtered summarily, without the benefit of due process, without the least pretense that this has anything to do with law, the principle of law.
And, no.
No. The performance was about the rest of us.
The rest of us who threw their support behind Duterte. I learned, dismayed, a long distance away, in Bolivia, while following the news about the campaign. Us, especially those who, during the darkest night of Martial Law, resisted the dictator. Covertly, then out in the open by marching, by denouncing, by writing and singing songs with some of the most stirring lyrics of patriotism written in any Philippine tongue.
Us, who escaped the dictator’s writs of execution, but now wish the same on others, who are not as equipped as we were to protect ourselves.
Us, who now paper over the fact that calling for the killing of criminals without due process could very well be like pulling the trigger itself though that reasoning will not or should not stand up in court.
Us, who will grudgingly admit to the constitutional logic of due process, but, just the same, will hold up the better ‘reality’ of the less criminality-the more order-the better for society scenario. Just for us. And just too bad for those who get tagged, identified properly or mistakenly – by who, really? — as criminals. And killed forthwith.
Us, who know that the veneer of a seemingly civilized, dispassionate discourse about the cost and benefit of the wave of killing the President advocates will not prevent nor hide the tsunami of blood that will result from such discourse.
Us, who under our normal, everyday hardworking Christian clothes could, unknowingly and even unwillingly, already be wearing the criminal’s shirt emblazoned with a big capital letter K.
Us, who know full well that the genie once released is forever out there, getting worse by the day. Not better. It might become normal. The new normal. Or would that be the new old, very old normal?
But better? Never.
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