Beware of the Potemkin complex

It’s been breezily reported by the Palace that GMA will be holding her first of four out-of-Manila Cabinet meetings – this time in Cauayan, Isabela, today. In short, La Presidenta will be touring our archipelago to feel the provincial pulse, preparatory to outlining her mega-plans next month in the traditional State of the Nation Address (SONA).

I guess La Gloria, in any event, feels safer and more-welcome outside of Metro Manila where our political and Leftist foes manage to stage their on-camera rallies and clashes with the police. The rural folk couldn’t care less about what we pretentious and contentious urbanites and quasi-proletarians are doing. To them, earning a living and sending their kids to school have priority over sturm und drang.

However, the President need not inquire in the provinces about what ails our nation. She put her finger on it herself when she just took office, after her predecessor Joseph "Erap" Estrada was toppled from the presidency: she had told this writer and others that what bedeviled our society most was the ingrained and corrupt bureaucracy. Well, that bureaucracy is still there – worse, its ranks from top to bottom are being swelled by equally (if not more) crooked officials and bureaucrats inserted into each agency by the GMA Administration.

In her campaign for "survival," La Gloria seems to be trying to please everybody. That’s the State of this Nation.

Be taray, be more masungit if you will, Madam President – as long as this results in putting the no-goods to rout. Smiling so photogenically won’t do. A few frowns are necessary. As for the SONA, speeches are no substitute for action – but everybody’s heard this sermon before.

Just as her late father, Cong Dadong Macapagal used to believe in "election by locomotion," since he would barnstorm the archipelago on the basis of the concept that "the hand you shake today will write your name on the ballot tomorrow," it’s good that La Glorietta does travel around to personally eyeball each region and assess its problems.

Yet, it is vital to remember that all she’ll get is the type of "prepared environment" which local officials contrive to make things look rosier than in reality.

During the reign of Empress Catherine the Great of Russia in the 18th century, one of her Marshals and court favorites, Prince Potemkin, used to precede her entourage everytime she went on tour of her southern domains. Just before the Empress arrived at each destination, the Prince had erected artificial villages, smiling and pretty, just like theatrical sets, so the ruler would see only prosperity and happiness among her "peasantry." In this deceptive manner, the Prince managed to impress the Empress with his administration of her "colonies." The ersatz villages – mere false facades – came to be known in history as "Potemkin Villages."

La Presidenta ought to beware of the rosy picture being fed her, or the false statistics being poured into her ear.

But she already knows the answers to her questions: What we need is to educate our people. Our crooks and political svengalis thrive on the ignorance of the citizenry. If we teach our people, they’ll learn that their ballot will set them free.

Build more school buildings, Madam President, get us more and better teachers by rewarding the good ones, and chucking out the bad.

It’s not that simple, of course: but it’s a start.

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By coincidence, we’ve mentioned Empress Catherine (whose monument to art is the world-renowned State Hermitage Museum whose back-to-back treasures put the Louvre in Paris to shame, despite its Mona Lisa and its current Da Vinci Code cachet of popularity). The Great Catherine began her imperial acquisition of art in 1764. After the October 1917 Red Revolution, the Communist government had seized the Czar’s private collections in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg (renamed by them Leningrad) – and thus swelled, along with other seizures, appropriations and archaeological finds, the Hermitage’s count of art treasures under the Palace’s stately baroque roof, to three million objets d’art.

This brings us to this week’s National Day of the Russian Federation and the 30th anniversary of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the Russian Federation and the Philippines. On this occasion, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Nebogatov and his ebullient, outgoing wife, the irrepressible Valentina, held a reception yesterday at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

What’s more interesting is that the Russians brought in a troupe from their famous Bolshoi Ballet, including a number of that Moscow group’s lead soloists, namely beautiful ballerinas and handsome, athletic young men, to do extracts from Giselle, Swan Lake, Tarantella, The Nutcracker, La Bayadere and Shopiniana. What a cultural feast Anatoly and Valentina prepared for Filipino concerts, featuring Rachmaninov, Tchaykovsky, and a splendid collection of cultural dances!

Ballet was introduced into Russia by Czar Alexis in 1673, and has become, over the centuries, the principal symbol of Russian culture. And, truth to tell, never have I seen, in any other glittering foreign capital, ballet as splendidly performed as in Moscow’s Bolshoi, or the Kirov in "Peter" (Leningrad). The favorite pastime among 145 million Russians are, of course, dancing, eating, drinking, enjoying a steam bath (sauna) or – for the foolhardy . . . ahem, I mean hardy, dunking themselves like Polar bears in icy ponds, or ice-caked rivers.

That’s the Russian character, perhaps in sum: cold hands, but warm hearts beating underneath the frigid exterior.

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Despite the icy winds, this writer used to enjoy travelling to the old Soviet Union. (I like to think the KGB trailed me most of the way during my peregrinations, which involved flying to Tbilisi, Georgia (Josef Stalin’s home town), spending a week in neighboring Abkhazia where the Greek hero and his Argonauts, in the mists of mythology, had sailed up the Bosphorus to the Black Sea in the Argus to steal both the local Princess and the fabled Golden Fleece.

I would take the overnight train from Moscow to Leningrad, named, but naturally, The Red Arrow, sharing a wagon-lit compartment with a Russian I had never met before. In those days, a pack of Marlboros (better a carton), or imported Levis and chocolate candy, got you a long way.

My most memorable experience was on April 30, 1972. Our group of friends had entered the theater to enjoy one of Mussorghsky’s operatic epics. The weather was frosty and dry. When we emerged after the typically thundering final curtain, we found the entire city completely dressed in white, under a thick blanket of snow Thus it is in Russia. You must expect nothing – just wait for what happens next.

On May 1, we found ourselves, thanks to special passes, in Red Square for the celebration of, what else, May Day. It snowed again, this time in Moscow, in little flurries. We shivered in our greatcoats as the massed battalions goose-stepped or trundled by. On the podium atop Lenin’s Tomb were the top brass, led by Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, flanked by dour-looking Kosygin and Podgorny, the ranking marshals, generals, air force officers and admirals of the superpower-reaching USSR.

There’s a story about Brezhnev who loved palatial homes, the latest model cars, and all the pomp and circumstance supposedly eschewed by the dialectic preachings of Communism and Bolshevism. His old mother came to visit him for the first time in many years and was toured through his digs in the Kremlin, given a spin in one of his fast cars, and lavished with presents.

Despite her obvious pride in her son’s status and achievements, Leonid B. noticed his mother looking more and more apprehensive. Finally, he popped the question at her: "Mama, what are you so worried about?"

To which the old lady replied: "All this is wonderful my son – but I’m so worried! What will happen to you if the Communists come back?"

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In a published announcement yesterday in this newspaper, the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) announced that it is now accepting applications for 31 vacant Regional Trial Courts and 27 first level courts (METC, MTCC, MCTC and MTC) in Metro Manila and several cities and provinces nationwide.

Two other important positions that will require nominees for Malacañang to choose from are the positions of Overall Deputy Ombudsman vacated by just retired Margarito Gervacio as well as the Deputy Ombudsman for Mindanao post soon to be vacated by Antonio Valenzuela.

The published JBC announcement listing vacancies in the first and second level trial courts will be followed as required by law with the publication of the names of the applicants accompanied by a request that any information, opposition or sworn complaint against any of the applicants should be submitted to the JBC Secretariat.

Despite this invitation to the public for a "feedback" on the applicants and the number of letters or complaints against a number of applicants received by the JBC, it is a common knowledge in the legal community that many undeserving applicants for judicial positions continue to be nominated by the JBC. Several of them, in fact, are inexplicably "named" by Malacañang!

When an appointment of a notorious JBC nominee is announced by Malacañang and the nominee is criticized by serious oppositors, the usual reaction from the Palace is that GMA merely "picked" the appointee from the JBC’s list of nominees. The Palace alibi is that the Council is presumed to have performed its constitutional duty of screening or vetting every nominee for competence, integrity, probity and independence.

The consensus in Bench and Bar circles is that the JBC should organize a much more effective screening and evaluation system. The Council has to insure better nominees who will be good members of the judiciary if appointed. What has been happening is that too many undeserving, ignorant and worse, "questionable" individuals have been permitted to worm their way into our Judiciary. The designation of a number of unqualified members to the judiciary is unfortunate proof that the present JBC system leaves too much room for political accommodation. This includes unworthy judges promoted owing to the importunings of an influential religious group that has been able, Administration after Administration, dating back to the Marcos regime, to shoehorn its proteges into nomination and appointment.

How can our Justice System be just if those who dispense it are the beneficiaries of an unjust process of political arm-twisting?