Darkness at noon — again / Posies for Raul Roco

You feel it and see it, I suppose, a huge fog gathering and threatening to let loose the angry tempest in its innards. First, you have Meralco quickening like a pot-bellied anthropoid determined that we all pay increased power rates even if that makes the common people go under. Then you have the Big Three oil companies announcing a price increase of 50 centavos per liter, eventually, we are told, 90 centavos per liter. Gahd! Finally, the water corporations have precipitately upped the ante on a commodity we all thought was the people’s birthright.

If all this doesn’t make the ground under your feet shudder, then nothing will.

Somehow you go back in time to the months and weeks and scant years before Sept. 21, 1972 when President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. Oil and gasoline prices then were the main issue. Power and water had yet to loom large. But each increase in gas and petrol prices stoked public indignation, particularly among the studentry. I had just returned from Paris after a four-year scholarship. My emotions were still alive and astir from widespread student demonstrations in the French capital. So fraught with anger were these demonstrations, so livid in their condemnation of French politics and society that even the hitherto implacable Charles de Gaulle had to temporarily flee its wrath. And seek the shield of the military.

Almost the same thing was happening here.

That was the First Quarter Storm. Were some notable French sociologists right after all? They said it was no longer the workers or the proletariat that were the "agents of historical change" but the studentry and the youth. Why? Because the students could package idealism and nationalism better than anybody else. Because they were still unmarried, had yet to be employed, were not yet burdened by families and filial responsibilities. Because, articulate and intelligent, highly motivated and incendiary they could unit the citizenry as nobody else could. A tongue of fire into a brazier.

So far, our youth and studentry have yet to bear the torches of the First Quarter Storm. But I suspect they will soon quicken to the hidden hand of history which emerges when social unrest starts coming to a boil. With the triple sockdolager of Meralco, gasoline and petrol increases, the steep increase in water rates, the streets of Metro Manila and other urban areas like Cebu, Davao, Bacolod, Baguio, Iloilo, will sooner than later resound to the thunder of marching feet.

Ours today is an escapist society straining to break out of its preposterous cocoon.

Escapist is right. Just look at all the media hullabaloo attending the death of entertainment celebrity Rico Yan. Look at ABS-CBN breaking all records for pious pap and spiritual drivel. Any American or European observer would have thought Rico Yan discovered a companion drug of penicillin, a new cure for AIDs, stormed the heights as a young Filipino Bill Gates, wrested immortal music from the spheres with every pitch of his incomparable tonsils, parted the waters of the Pasig as Moses did, brought impoverished Filipinos to the Promised Land, outdid Mother Theresa in works of piety and human compassion, could play six musical instruments at one time, silenced the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan with a simple prayer at the grotto of the Virgin Mary, replicated the biblical miracle of loaves and fishes.

As I wrote earlier, this is not Rico Yan’s fault but media’s.

The exceptional hullabaloo was probably the signal I needed to realize things had gone completely wacky in the Philippines. Our values had gone down the drain. A showbiz personality was immolated by media on a tabernacle better reserved for Pope John Paul II. There was nobody to admire, idolize, esteem, place on a pedestal. Our culture was a wilderness. The Roman Catholic Church had moved back, a cautionary step in the face of a riot of scandals involving priests sexually abusing the very young in America. The two men hogging the headlines in the Middle East were Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat. Both were unredeemed bloodthirsty terrorists in their earlier days now juggling the future of Jerusalem in their hands. America — Savior and Superman — simply got stuck with Sharon and couldn’t move.

So in the emptiness, the death of Rico Yan provided the tinsel and the folderol. And the media devoured him delightedly throwing journalistic balance, caution and equanimity to the four winds — which speaks volumes for media.

Nobody envies President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo her job. It’s the loneliest and the saddest ever assigned to a Filipino today. She inherited a situation, a system, a sick society, that had long parted with reason, a political establishment long enamored of the teats of the Golden Cow. She’s right in saying no to Cha-Cha (Charter Change) now promoted by the tradpols as the panacea to the nation’s ills. There’s a widespread feeling — an illusion actually — that change for the better will come if the constitution is soon amended. If we shift from a presidential to a parliamentary system. If, as Nene Pimentel argues, we adventure into a federated setup where the Muslims can own, pasture and govern their own federated territory.

Maybe and again maybe not. Today or soon would not be the appropriate time. The ship of state is sinking or about to sink. Or has capsized on the shoals. The task is to save or rescue it, not fuss over whether a prime minister under parliamentary will do a better job than a president under the presidential mode. That’s for the birds.

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It’s time we lifted praises to somebody who deserves it. And I speak of Raul Roco, erstwhile senator of the realm and now secretary of education. I should have written earlier when Raul was the target of wild and wooly elements in his department who wanted him out. Why? The charge was that he was too stern a disciplinarian, a Prussian drillmaster who cared not a fig for the feelings of his subordinators. Another charge was that one of his two official drivers was driving for his wife. Still another charge was that Secretary Roco had "trivialized" the school curriculum by limiting the subjects to English, Filipino, Math, Science and Pagkamakabayan.

Well, let me say this for the first charge. Many employees and officials in the Education Department were either enjoying sinecures or privileged positions where the first and last consideration was money. We all know how corrupt the department is or was, how it was the Golden Goose of Erap Estrada favorites, how hundreds of millions of pesos switched hands in a single textbook deal. So Raul Roco would have no more of this hanky-panky. Naturally those affected turned on him with unaccustomed venom. About his tough and no-nonsense demeanor? Well you all saw Senator Roco during the presidential impeachment trial. He was tough. His no-nonsense behavior and intimate knowledge of the law earned him kudos. He was undoubtedly the best Senate performer then, together with Loren Legarda.

If all they can throw at Roco is that one of his two drivers also drives for his wife, then the critics can virtually muster nothing to assail his integrity. Get real, man. Tell me you caught the secretary digging his hands into the cookie jar in the company of, say, Jaime Dichavez or Marc Jimenez or Atong Ang, then I’ll come along with barrels blazing.

The truth is Raul Roco is one of the very few in President GMA’s government who’s doing a damn good job. Not only that. All approval surveys have Roco on top. His department has joined the charmed and narrow circle of agencies no longer polluted with graft and corruption, and that’s saying a lot.

As to the ongoing brouhaha about the five-subject curriculum, I say let it ride. English, Filipino, Math, Science and Pagkamakabayan (which embraces Sining, Kultura, Musika, Physical Education, Produktibong Pamumuhay, Edukasyon Pantahanan at Pangkabuhayan, Heograpiya, Kasaysay, Sibika, Araling Panlipunan, Technology and Home Economics, Health and Character Education).

I like the emphasis on science and math. In many international exams for intermediate and high school students, we Filipinos have been clobbered, battered and driven to the cellar in science and math. Unless we go upstream in these two subjects, and upstream with a vengeance, the Philippines can never hope to join the Knowledge Society, Information and Communications Technology. That’s what our economy urgently needs. And we should never surrender the great advantage we have — proficiency in English. That was Erap Estrada’s big blunder. He sought the exile of English and the paramountcy of Pilipino or Tagalog. That was insane in a world driven by technology whose bedrock language was and remains English.

Whither the star of Raul Roco? If the 2004 presidential elections take place, he will certainly be a frontrunner.