Eternal Vigilance

There's The Rub : 'Kulit'

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

A FRIEND was lavish in his praise recently and introduced me on stage as someone who, not unlike John the Baptist, had been a voice in the wilderness for some time but who now had a chorus of voices behind him. He was referring to the fact that for many years I belonged to a tiny minority, if indeed I was not alone, warning about Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's obsession with power and misguided rule.

Well, if I feel at all like John the Baptist, it is only because of my hair, which has grown long and unkempt. Thankfully, I do not have a scraggly beard as well. These days, I feel more like Gandalf the Gray, with much of my hair turning into that color, if not indeed like Gandalf the White, half of it having already gone in that direction. In any case, I prefer Gandalf because he won in the end. The comparison with John the Baptist gives me the uncomfortable reminder that the fellow didn't just remain a voice in the wilderness he-or his head-ended up on a silver platter as offering to Herod, upon the request of Salome.

The sublime irony is that the people who bitterly arraigned me for being "anti-Arroyo" are now loudest in vituperating her. I can more honestly categorize them as "anti-Arroyo" since theirs is a more personal anti: They don't want her to be president anymore after they helped her mightily to foist a plague upon us and become what she is today.

Well, I can't say that my anti wasn't personal either. When someone taxes me to death just so she can extirpate in the name of "antiterrorism" the civil rights this country's martyrs fought so hard to get, I take it very, very personally. When someone borrows more than two presidents combined, assigning the money to the account of one Jose Pidal and the onus of paying it to my kids and their kids, I take it very, very personally. Of course, telling the ex-pro- and currently anti-Arroyo people "I told you so" is just a cheap thrill, but who says I don't like cheap thrills? I told you so.

I don't know that it takes a gift of prophecy to be able to foretell how things are going to unravel in this country. You need only common sense. You need only exercise your senses. I've always wondered why people want a sixth sense when they don't bother using their five anyway, especially the first, which is sight. You have to be blind not to have seen where the current occupant of Malacañang was headed over the last four years. All the signs were there, aglow in neon.

Another leader would have shown humility, if not trepidation, in stepping into the shoes of an ousted president, particularly one who did nothing to contribute to it. Ms Arroyo acted as though it was owed her. Another leader would have praised those who kept a candle burning in the dark rather than those who descended in light of day to pluck the prize. Ms Arroyo praised the generals who came last first and the activists who came first last in her inaugural speech. Another leader would have been circumspect about betraying the cause that gave her power gratuitously. Ms Arroyo immediately waved the olive branch at Joseph Estrada after his own horde massed at the Edsa highway.

Another beneficiary of the Edsa People Power uprising would have found in its dreams of peace her true calling. Ms Arroyo found in George W. Bush's dreams of empire her true essence. (I truly will take a long time to forgive the ex-pro-Arroyo officials for that one. Was it not patent even then that that version of anti-terrorism merely constituted anti-everything democracy, not to speak of people power, stood for?) Another leader would not have lied openly on the graves of Jose Rizal and Pope John Paul II. Ms Arroyo did, about her intention not to run and about her dragging her feet on Edsa II. Another leader would have not have stolen the elections. Ms Arroyo did, helloing Garci to talk not just of winning by one million votes ("dagdag" [vote padding] is the least of her crimes) but about making witnesses scarce. Another leader would have resigned after apologizing for the worst possible crime in an election. Ms Arroyo is still there, like Medusa causing people to die just by looking at her.

Could not this preponderance of evidence have shown her up for what she is? I will not say I told you so, I will just draw a lesson from it.

Over the past several months, I've heard people say that the reason people are loath to go back to the streets is that the last two Edsa uprisings failed. Not at all. Edsa didn't fail, we did. We failed by thinking Edsa was the end when it was in fact only the beginning. We failed by thinking that after we had felled a despot, we could pat ourselves on the back for a job well done and slink back into obscurity, letting the new ruler take care of things, ignoring the signs of tyranny creeping back. We failed by thinking we, the people, were no longer needed, we could get on with our private lives or secret identities until, like Zorro, we are summoned to don mask and cape to right a wrong, to end a new oppression. That concept of Edsa sucks.

While it is a resplendent thing, Edsa is also an admission of defeat. It is also proof of failure. It is the clearest sign that we never raised a voice to prevent things from getting to a point where we have to take the most heroic action just to get the most basic things. It is the surest sign that we never bestirred ourselves to stop the madness, or only excoriated others who did because their passions reflected on our apathy, being roused from stupor only at the last two minutes, and only by a need to survive, only by an instinct for self-preservation. I've never stopped believing in the worth of Edsa. But I've never stopped believing either in the importance of making sure the very next day we won't need to do it again.

Thomas Jefferson did say the price of freedom was eternal vigilance. I can only echo his thought:

The price of peace is perpetual 'kulit' [persistence].