Getting used to the unusual

Shaking, shocking are recent events.

This week we had a justice of the antigraft court exposing alleged pressure from his superior to give up what has been billed as "the trial of the century" – the case of plunder for which an ex-President may be sent to the gas chamber. And we had that superior calling the whistleblower a lazy, lying incompetent. Things like this don’t happen. We were raised to reveret justices as venerable old men who do not easily provoke, and who certainly don’t act like characters in telenovelas.

Simultaneous with that exchange was a Luzon blackout that sent us texting friends if a coup was in the offing. Day-long blackouts used to plague our land only 10 years ago as a matter of course. Yet last Sunday’s event had us all thinking if jellyfishes weren’t invading us from Lingayen Gulf, but were rolling out of military camps in tanks and full battle gear.

The wild texting was triggered by another shaking news just a week ago. We were told that in this forsaken country of ours, a cabal of young army and police officers were plotting to grab power. Unbelievable, for who would want to rule a people like us? Yet to further confound and confuse, there came out statements from on high that the plot was hatched by a loyalist police general who just wants to become chief of the National Police. This claim was refuted by that general as an ploy by a senator to hide his own dubious ambitions.

And speaking of that senator, only last August we were witness to still another strange event. We had an army colonel, who at one time had defected to the communist underground, accusing the senator of the most heinous of crimes: kidnapping for ransom, murder, narcotrafficking. We watched former members of the senator’s alleged syndicates confessing under oath their participation in crime. And we wondered to ourselves why other senators chose to take the charges lightly. Had we been the ones exposed as masterminds of such heinous acts, wouldn’t we now be in jail for trial without bail, instead of pondering events that make our dreary little lives so exciting?

It’s easy to blame all this on the media. But that’s shallow excuse. Our country is going through most unusual times. We are in an extreme situation that is testing our strength as a nation. Commentaries can add to the agitation. News reports can provoke more unusual events and extreme situations. But in the end the media merely reflect these unusual times and events.

When Joseph Estrada was arrested on April 25, the nation saw from live radio-TV coverage what awaits anyone charged with a heinous crime; that is, booking and detention pending trial. Perhaps there was excessive show of police force; perhaps empathy for the underdog came into play. Whatever, the live news coverage unfolded into a riot. The riot in turn led to injuries to half a dozen newsmen covering the event. They decided to pull out lest the mob vent its anger on them. The halt of news coverage only fired up the mob. Enter the traditional pols with their desire to court votes. Enter, too, the disgruntled cronies with their desire to return to power. A potent combination, as we all learned six days later. Mixed with drugs and liquor, sticks and stones, home-made shotguns and incendiary speeches, that potent combination exploded into an attack on Malacañang by tens of thousands of poor folk. Cannon fodder, if you will.

Some blame the confusing, confounding events on a free-wheeling democracy. Is it really the culprit?

We’ve been through unusual times before. Fifteen years ago we were thrown into it. At EDSA in 1986 many of us marched and risked lives to end a dictatorship. In its stead we put up a new democracy symbolized by a widow who led the long, bitter fight to regain freedom.

That fledgling democracy was naturally prone to many mistakes. One was listening too much to the whispers of a select few with ulterior business motives. Another was miscalculating the economic recovery that would result from free enterprise; hence, the blackouts of 1991-1992. There was also the mistake of slow justice for victims of martial law and against the conjugal kleptocracy. And there was the mistake of not arguing with international creditors for enough breathing spell from debt payments.

As the nation struggled back to its feet under the leadership of Cory Aquino, other people had other ideas. Her term was rocked by no less than eight coups, all of them fortunately aborted. The last but worst was in December 1989, when the Makati financial district was the battleground. All those attempts to grab power slowed down the inevitable rise of the nation – a rise fired by a common desire to make the new democracy work. Democracy had its many faults and weaknesses, but Filipinos decided back then that it was the best for us.

History repeated itself last January. The dramatis personae, the causes, the age of the crowd were different. But Filipinos rose again in one voice to boot out a President, not a dictatorial one but somebody worse perhaps in the area of robbing the country blind.

In the wake of that unusual event, another woman rose to power. Again, the nation struggled back to its feet from two-and-a-half years of lost confidence in the economic and political systems. Again, mistakes were committed. There was no boldness to muster the millions at EDSA-2 into a potent force for change. There was no creativity for new ways to solve old, festering problems of poverty, insurgency and crime. The old mistake was repeated in slow justice for victims of presidential thievery and against cronies. Have we seen any retribution for those who misused the hard-earned contributions of SSS and GSIS members? Where are the cronies who made money from such deals? How much did they pay to become "state witnesses"?

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s was a constitutional ascendancy to the Presidency. But some disgruntled cronies and politicians simply can’t accept it. They plotted to overthrow her last May 1. Foiled, they continue to plot to this day. But an ocean separates plotting from executing. It takes more than planning to mount a coup. It takes mass support, and money, and control of special military units like the Scout Rangers or the Marines or the Tactical Air Wings. But it also takes guts for the administration to punish the plotters in order to stop them forever. That’s why her own supporters are asking President GMA what’s taking her legal team so long to prosecute the leaders of the May Day attack.

In the face of it all is the need to reform our land. This is not the job of government alone. This is a job for citizens who care. It is the course of doing this job that unusual events crop up to shake and shock us.

There is a need to review and revise our political system into one that suits better our different regional traits and archipelagic terrain. There is a need to reform our socio-economic system so that we can once and for all eradicate gross inequality. There is a need to reform the judiciary to make it more attuned to our present need for order, security and safety.

Some of the upheavals that are shaking and shocking us are caused precisely by courageous attempts to reform the overlapping systems. The bold exposés of Col. Vic Corpus is a case in point. Some of the unnerving news reports also stem from attempts to resist change and reforms. For instance, the unending coup talks.

Still the path should be in reforms for the greater good. Working for reforms can be frustrating, to say the least, and will entail sacrifices. It is always safer and easier to just grin and bear things. But as George Bernard Shaw said, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, while the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself; thus, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Unfortunately, there are few unreasonable men. Most of us would rather roll with the tide. Life is too short, so why spend it trying to change our world. Besides, we’re not in power. Let those who are do it.

Then again, reform won’t come from the bureaucracy. Government can influence it. But it’s going to come out of the "hearts and minds of the citizens," to quote John Adams. Revolutions, history shows, are not waged by the majority, but by a committed, well-focused defined minority. Didn’t it take only a dozen men to overturn the Roman Empire?

We can liken what is happening to us today to those 12 men. In our time they rise to create unusual events and to become news, to make us ponder our situation, to throw us from our easy chairs, and inspire us to march with the wave of reform.

* * *

You can e-mail comments to [email protected]