Better Dead Than Alive

There's The Rub : The living and the dead

Conrado de Quiros dequiros@info.com.ph
Inquirer News Service

IT'S enough to make you believe God is playing tricks on us. The one man who should have been president of this country will never be so. He is dead -- felled by cancer. He would have been 64 on Oct. 26. Indeed, the one man who was voted president of this country will never be so. He too is dead -- felled by a stroke. He would have been 66 on Aug. 20. They are, of course, Raul Roco and Fernando Poe Jr.

One is tempted to say that the way things are going, Panfilo Lacson and Eddie Villanueva should seriously worry about their health. But Lacson may always rest easy in the thought that only the good die young.

God's trick, which must raise questions about the nature of divine humor, is that the one woman who never deserved to become president of this country in 2001 and never got to be voted so in 2004 is still there, alive and, well, if not kicking at least clinging to the throne so tenaciously you can hear nails scraping wood.

I did hear someone express the thought last weekend that maybe we did right not to vote for Raul Roco. Indeed, that maybe they did right to prevent FPJ from taking office. Or else we would not have a president right now. Maybe God in his infinite wisdom spared us this pass.

Well, I don't know that wisdom, divine or not, infinite or not, may ever be associated with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's presence in Malacañang, or even on earth. At the very least, we don't have a president right now either, if by that is meant someone who got voted into power and is leading the nation forward. What we have is someone pretending to be so and leading the nation to ruin. At the very most, the briefest tenure by an enlightened president -- or never mind enlightened, mind only legitimate -- is still worlds better than the longest one by a tyrant -- or never mind tyrant, mind only usurper. Either Roco or Poe would easily have been a blessing for this country, however fleetingly they would have passed before our eyes.

Instead, we have a curse. And one that threatens to haunt us all our lives.

A couple of weeks ago, during the State of the Nation Address, Ms Arroyo told us that our monumental problems today do not owe to her but to a political culture that is grinding us underfoot. She was at least half-right. She would have been fully right if she had said our monumental problems owed to her and a political culture that was grinding us underfoot. The two are not contradictory, they are complementary. Indeed, they are more than complementary, they are one and the same. Roco showed during his life that you need not be part of that political culture. All you have to do, as the anti-drug crusade puts it, is just say no.

I remember that one of the debates in Roco's camp during the elections was whether to accept "donations" from people like Lucio Tan. Some believed he should, not just to improve his financial position but his psychological projection -- he was being backed by "wise money." Roco refused, though Tan has roots in Naga City as well. Those donations do not come free, he said, they carry with them more strings than are needed to tie up Florante to a tree in the woods. His position was better to lose with a light heart than to win with a heavy burden.

I remember as well that yet another debate in his camp was the wisdom of fielding Hermie Aquino and the people who eventually filled up his senatorial slate. Though Hermie was an Aquino, his detractors said, his name did not ring a bell. Neither did Aksyon's senatorial candidates. Roco's position was that better lesser known lights than well-known trapos. Better to lose fighting the good fight than to win peddling the bad cause.

And I remember that the most critical debate in his camp was whether he should continue to run or not after he came back from the United States when his cause seemed lost. When his supporters had lost heart and the voters were turning away from the propaganda that sick presidents were not good for the country. Roco refused to quit, arguing that, true enough, sick presidents were bad for the country, but there was sickness and there was sickness. Some were sick only in the body, others were sick in the mind. Presidents who were sick in the body but sound in the mind cured a sick country. Presidents who were sound in the body but sick in the mind only made the country sicker.

Roco reposed his faith instead in the people. We had no end of conversations when I would argue before him that this country, more than America, qualified for Mencken's savage barb that "Nobody yet lost a buck underestimating the popular taste." Which was true most of all of elections. He insisted on carrying his campaign on a high plane, based on ideas, scorning the song-and-dance routine. He kept telling me that the Filipino voter was not stupid, and that this voter could be convinced to make the right choice given the compelling logic of survival. He was unshakeable in that faith. He reposed his faith in particular in the youth, whom he truly believed was the hope of this seemingly hopeless country. You can't lose, he said, with the youth behind you.

All the while Ms Arroyo was soliciting donations from Bong Pineda, wooing the Marcoses and the Joseph Estrada camps, dropping the charges against Ping Lacson to encourage him to not quit, paying off Noli de Castro to run as running mate, leaving no centavo in the public treasury unturned, and otherwise flailing furiously at the very horse she now says is trampling us underfoot.

Truly, presidents who are sick in the body but hale in the mind can cure the country while presidents who are hale in the body but sick in the mind can only make the country sicker. Even more truly, some dead are more alive than the living, and some living are more alive than the dead.