The things that I love to do always bring me a pure kind of personal satisfaction. Sometimes though, I also acquire, on the side, some unforgettable teachings. I guess this must be true to all of us. While joyful undertakings normally yield memorable results, there are times that the learning just dawns on us in the most unexpected moment.
Of the few things I love to do, there are two, occupying extreme ends, that I prefer. The first is to watch socio-political events as they begin to unravel. When there are distinct signals emitted for the occurrence of what I perceive as less common, and therefore, unusual events affecting our society, I put aside my routines and put my ears to the ground. To count as the second, I love to listen to standard music (mostly vocals) of yore for I am always awed by the symphony of meaningful lyrics, touching melody and the God-given singing talent of many balladeers.
The event that recently arrested the attention of many of our people was of the genre that encompassed both of my interests. I could attribute it to pure “sulagma” to mean “uncanny coincidence”. When young Mr. Jose de Venecia III and a horde of cabinet secretaries appeared before the Senate, I surmised it was a political event of serious repercussions. But, believe me, before I tuned in to the national television covering the senate hearing, I half-cocked my ears to listening to an old long playing record on my antiquated stereo system. At the precise moment I caught Mr. JDV III on tv, Mr. Tom Jones was singing “A New Young Mexican Puppeteer”.
Tom Jones’ song is of a place called Albuquerque in Mexico where “people don’t live with peace and joy, xx (are) lost and don’t know where to go”. Certainly, we are not a lost race and so we cannot be the people in that song. But, in spite of my being a incorrigible optimist, I can say without fear of contradiction that with the conflicts generated by the government of Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, which I perceived to have refused to bare all truthfully, we may be a race with divergent paths to go.
What conflicts do I talk about? Let me just refer to one, a conflict of policies. Sometime ago, Pres. Arroyo, pummeled by blows coming from the senate, dug in. Using a vast array of executive arsenal, she tried to dilute the potency of legislative hearings which she viewed, quite accurately, as convenient excuses to pull the rug under her. There was an instance when she issued an order that prohibited her sub-alterns, also known as cabinet secretaries, from appearing at senate inquiries done in aid of legislation. Thence on, many a senate sessions could not maximize their effectiveness because the seats reserved for invited president’s men remained empty.
Suddenly, the president unleashed all her prized wards. Against her prior stance of depriving the senate the appearance of her people, she, this time, permitted every high-ranking official in her department to attend the Senate investigation of the highly controversial ZTE deal. Apparently, her instruction was for her executive adjuncts to answer all questions surrounding the transaction.
Frankly, I could not see a reason for the president’s complete turn around of policies until, JDV III exploded a debilitating bomb. The young son of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, charged, in a rather different route, that the multi million dollar ZTE deal was pushed by a mystery man who happened to be no less than the First Gentleman. From the bizarre show of previously unavailable cabinet secretaries, I could see puppets dancing to a manipulative hand. Unlike Tom Jones ballad though, I did not believe that the puppeteer was the young JDV III.
I concluded that when Pres. Arroyo allowed her men to appear at the senate hearing, she only wanted so many mouths (I did not say puppets) to speak of the deal and skirt the mention of her husband’s name. The naïve in me fell for the ploy. Indeed, I was lulled into trying to fathom the labyrinthine arguments (of the puppets) on whether the deal could be useful. I, for a while, missed why, in the first place, the deal was so fast tracked. My, oh my!