Acres of diamonds

My. What a storm of criticism has erupted over the head of President GMA because, her critics fulminate, she had junked Dante Canlas as Director General of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and Secretary of Socio-economic Planning. The President may have made a number of bum moves lately, but in this she was absolutely right.

I don’t know enough about Prof. Romulo Neri to say whether he’ll do better in that post, but the kindest thing I can manage to comment about exiting Secretary Canlas is that he wasn’t up to scratch – and flipflopped disastrously on the PIATCO Terminal 3 scandal. Further than that, I won’t say, ‘Nuff said. Mustn’t kick a fellow when he’s down, especially at Christmastime.

What about the guys who bungled that clumsy government attempt to seize control of the Manila Electric Company (Meralco)? Or was it to intimidate ABS-CBN as well?

The Lopezes are, indeed, going broke and have a mountain of debts and court-decreed "payments" and "refunds" to make – even Maynilad water is drying up – but this didn’t justify that ugly move to virtually "take over" Meralco. After this gambit was first exposed in this corner, in a column ("Power Play") which I had to file from London – since I got the inside story when I was already on my way to the airport – the government officials who framed that weird draft ultimatum have been denying right and left that they had planned to grab control. Sanamagan. Of course they’re denying it. When a coup fails, the "coupsters" run for cover, explaining they were only trying to save the situation, not swallow up the pie.

GMA doesn’t need enemies, not even the opposition. She’s got enough lamebrains, backstabbers, space cadets and Rasputins in her Cabinet, in her family, and among her "trusted" lawyers (who’ve been empire-building, so they’ll be riding high and mighty long after, they coldly calculate, GMA herself has gone into retirement). When’s that? My cracked crystal ball doesn’t say.

La Presidenta is trying hard. That’s what I can say. Is it just in time – or already too late? That is the question. But this isn’t the time for more quotations from Hamlet. Shakespeare’s Melancholy Dane had at least been warned by Banquo’s ghost that something was rotten in the state of Denmark. Something’s rotten in the state today – but it’s not in Denmark.

* * *

Is it true that a colonel from the Philippine National Police (PNP) Intelligence was the one who scared the Australians and Canadians out of their wits, spurring them to shut down their Embassies here – with this Dutchman from the European Commission following suit and closing down his office, too? Susmariosep!

Some diplomats recently confided to me that they didn’t trust our "intelligence" agencies because they had been "leaking" secrets – but I didn’t know they were leaking these secrets to the diplomats.

Last week, when I took an Australian diplomat to task for not sharing with our government beforehand the intelligence information they had received (described as a "credible" and "specific" threat which prompted them to abruptly close down their embassy), he replied they couldn’t have done so without "endangering" the lives of their sources. Were their sources – or source (singular) – from PNP Intelligence?

A few days ago, this writer bumped into an old friend from Europe. I was surprised to see him in town – to be blunt, he was a spook representing the top intelligence directorate of one of the European "powers". In our conversation, he remarked on the greater reliability of "PNP Intelligence" (as compared with military, and our other intelligence services, presumably). Why, all of a sudden, are foreigners praising PNP Intelligence – out of the blue – when we ourselves believe that the police are flops in most things they do, or, worse, particularly in the things they do?

This thing about the so-called police intelligence officer going straight to foreign diplomats (and his foreign "friends" in the same business, since for years the Philippines has been awash in Aussie agents, pushing for military and Coast Guard procurements from Australia and spying on us in general), seems terribly credible. But what was his motivation? Was he a double or even triple agent? Or was he currying favor with the Australians and the Canadians? (I don’t think he confided in the Dutchman, since those guys can only offer Dutch Treat.) Or was he, to invoke that over-popular buzzword, "out to destabilize the GMA administration"?

If it can be verified, what that police officer did can only be described, kid gloves off, as treason. You don’t go direct to foreign, even if presumably "friendly" establishments. Under the discipline of the uniform and the intelligence oath, an operative reports only to his superiors in the chain of command. How can we trust in the loyalty and discretion of a secret service agent who leaks secrets? If I had my druthers, "death by musketry" comes to mind. That’s what's imposed in wartime – and, make no mistake about it, we’re at war.

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Before I forget: A self-confessed error. In my column the other day, I referred to American grunts brazenly defying traffic regulations by zipping past red lights in Zamboanga City in their Mitsubishi STRADA 5 by 5s. Such a vehicle doesn’t exist, like the marvelous Aston-Martin of James Bond in Die Another Day. Those Zamboanga buggies are 4x4’s. When the Japanese begin producing STRADA 5x5s, I’ll let you know.

Mea culpa.

* * *

It’s chic to mourn that here we are, already in mid-December, but the "Christmas spirit" doesn’t exist. Of course, the Christmas spirit exists, even if days look seem more drab and gray than technicolor. The Pinoy’s spirit – for all our setbacks, disappointments, penury, and perverseness – is always in the heart.

Just to check it out, we went to Robinson’s Galleria and Megamall yesterday, and both were bustling with smiling, happy people. They weren’t buying too much, but the families and singles we encountered were joyful. The fast-food outlets were crammed (Filipinos, one visitor once remarked, seem to be eating all the time), the kids were scampering about, and the biggest perceived threat (knock on wood) was to be run over by a speeding baby-carriage.

Believe me, I come from a family that’s known life’s ups and downs. Our family’s upper middle-class existence was completely destroyed by the Pacific War. In sum, we lost everything, and emerged only with ashes and memories into utter poverty. As kids, our happiest Christmas was in a shanty, with our widowed mother – God bless her – presiding over a meager noche buena (a chicken miraculously donated by a friend who had passed on a P50 "gift" from an unknown American). Our clothes were threadbare and our socks were darned, but what a wonderful Christmas Eve that was! It will forever be remembered. I’ve spent Christmas in the jungle, and in the battlefield. By golly, even in the bleakest of times, there was always that glow to remind us that Jesus came to earth to redeem us with His Love.

Maligayang Pasko! Feliz Navidad! Naimbag a Pascua! We’ve said it in so many ways in this Catholic – this Christian country of ours. And, despite our blackest sins, this spirit continues to inspire us, and move us to strive on. But it must also remind us of the work undone and the challenges still to be faced.

Many years ago, in a hotel in Mount Hagen in the Western highlands of Papua New Guinea, I almost came to blows with a half-drunk Aussie who sneered that in the Philippines "there’s a Catholic church on every street corner, but the people are dirt-poor!" He apologized later for this remark, but on reflection, I have to admit that he was right. Indeed, there’s a church of every denomination everywhere (not just Catholic), but our people remain poor.

Yet, thankfully, not poor in spirit. That, at least, is our consolation. If Karl Marx scoffed that "religion is the opium of the people" – it works. Even in the former Soviet Union, in Russia, the promise of Our Lady was vindicated. Faith in God remains strong and vibrant.

* * *

Now that everybody’s talking about a US attack on Baghdad, I’m reminded that through Iraq flow those two great rivers that are part of the Fertile Crescent which constitutes the cradle of civilization. These are the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. (The other one, the great Nile, flows through Egypt.)

The philosopher Russell Conwell relates that one day, while journeying down the Tigris and Euphrates, he found himself under the direction of an old Arab guide whom he had hired in Baghdad. As the old man led Conwell’s camel by the halter along the banks of those ancient rivers, he told him a strange story.

He recounted that not far from the River Indus once lived a Persian by the name of Ali Hafed. Hafed owned a large farm brimming with orchards of dates, grainfields, and lush gardens. He had considerable wealth and was a happy and contented man until one day, there came along a venerable Buddhist priest who had walked there from far away in the East.

The old monk sat by Ali’s fireplace, and told him of how the world was made. He said that the world was once a mere bank of fog, until the Almighty thrust His finger into the murk and began slowly to move His finger around, increasing speed until at last He had whirled the fog into a ball of fire. The fireball had spun through the universe, burning its way through other banks of fog, condensing the moisture as it went. Finally, this condensed moisture fell into floods of rain upon the fireball’s hot surface, cooling the outward crust. The internal fires burning outward from the crust threw themselves up to form mountains and hills and valleys, priaries and plains. If the internal molten mass which came bursting out cooled very quickly, it became granite (out of which man built his palaces, temples and pyramids); if less quickly, what resulted was copper; still less quickly, silver; much less quickly, gold; and, after gold, diamonds were formed.

Explained the priest: "A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight." One diamond, the size of a man’s thumb, the priest told the dazzled Hafed, could buy his entire province, and if a man had an entire mine of diamonds, he could place his children on thrones by the power of his great wealth.

The monk probably didn’t realize the damage his words had inflicted. Ali Hafed, who had counted himself both wealthy and contented, went to bed that night a poor man. "He had not lost anything," the Arab said, "but he was poor because he was discontented, and discontented because he feared he was poor."

Ali resolved that what he wanted most in life was a mine of diamonds. Early the next morning, after a sleepless night, Ali sought out the monk and asked him: "Where can I find a mine of diamonds?"

"Diamonds?" the priest exclaimed, "What do you want with diamonds?"

"Why, I want to be immensely rich!" Ali replied.

The monk said that the only way to find his diamonds was to search for them. More than that he could not say.

So Ali sold his farm, bundled up his money, left his family in the care of a neighbor and went away in quest of this fabled mine of diamonds. He wandered through many lands. And he spent all he had accumulated in that desperate quest, but found nothing. Finding himself impoverished and weary in Barcelona, Spain (of all places), the Arab recounted, Ali threw himself into the foaming sea and sank beneath the waves.

Conwell was puzzled at this tale. There seemed to be no beginning and no end. He asked his Arab guide to finish what he had started. The guide smiled and went on.

The man who had purchased Hafed’s farm, he narrated, one day led his camel into the garden to drink in the brook that ran through it. The fellow noticed a curious flash of light from one of the white sands of the stream. He pulled out a black stone which had an eye of light reflecting all the hues of the rainbow. He took the pebble into the house and placed it on the mantel over the central fireplace and forgot all about it.

A few days later, the same old priest came by to visit the farm, and the minute he entered the room he noted the flash of light from the stone, and asked aloud: "Has Ali Hafed returned?"

"Why do you ask?" The other man inquired.

"Because here is a diamond," the monk retorted.

"Oh no," the man laughed. "That is just a stone I found in the garden."

"But," the priest insisted, "I know a diamond when I see one! This is positively a diamond!"

Together, they rushed out to the old garden and stirred up the white sand with their fingers, and behold! there came out more beautiful and valuable gems than the first.

"In this way," the Arab story-teller cackled, "was discovered the diamond mine of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond mine in the history of mankind, excelling the Kimberly itself. The Kohinoor and the Orloff gems of the crowns of England and Russia came from that mine!"

The Arab tore the Tarbush cap off his head and swung it around to emphasize the moral of his tale: "Had Ali Hafed stayed home and dug in his own garden, or his own wheat fields, instead of wretchedness, starvation, and death in a strange land, he would have found acres of diamonds!"

There’s nothing to add to this story. You know what it says.