Conspiracy theories

The traffic accident that seriously injured former senator Rene Saguisag and killed his wife was a tragic indictment of how many Filipino drivers treat road intersections governed by traffic lights.

A growing number of Filipino drivers (the number is growing because getting away with something is the best recruiter for emulation) see the yellow light of caution at intersections as the exact opposite, a signal to barrel down the road to try and beat the impending red light.

But tragic as it is as an indictment of Filipino driving, an even more tragic shadow hung over the accident, largely unspoken because of the delicateness of the subject matter, but hanging heavily over the consciousness just the same.

And what is this tragic shadow hanging heavily over us as a nation? It is the notion of a conspiracy, that there could be more than meets the eye in this accident, that it may not have been an accident at all.

Of course we shudder to think of this even as a possibility. This is perhaps why nobody has dared bring this notion out in the open. Hopefully the reluctance is only deferential, out of respect for everyone concerned in this difficult time of their lives.

But better believe that the notion is in fact there. And it is there not even because it might be remotely true. It is there because the Philippines has reached a certain state of incredulity that almost anything else is plausible.

The greatest victim of this festering state of incredulity is, of course, the government. A government that has failed the expectations of citizens in many respects consequently becomes a government that is viewed as capable of anything else.

The list of sins of the government has become so long that any addendum, however fictitious, malicious or incredible, gets lost in the lengthening queue for hard evidence and logical proof and is thus swept along as though true.

Take a look at the list – election fraud, bribery, hooliganism, kickbacks, horse-trading, manipulation, abuse of discretion – the list is endless. So what else is there that is so incredible as to be implausible?

That is why a conspiracy theory, introduced even belatedly into the Saguisag tragedy, cannot but strike fire in the hearts of a public long primed to believing the capability of government to do anything.

Naturally, conspiracy theories are always delicious even if they are often poisonous. But they become even more tempting if the conditions for their propagation have been primed and laid out neatly by believable facts.

So far, and honestly mercifully, the conspiracy theory in the Saguisag tragedy has not moved beyond the sphere of private gestation of possibilities. We sincerely hope it will remain that way.

Not because we believe it to be deferential but because we pity the poor country, and the poor government, upon whose face every conceivable piece of shit has been slapped, the uncanny thing of which is because it probably deserves it.

Not a wind blows anymore that does not produce a rustle in the grass, and of which the immediate interpretation is that of a snake slithering among the blades. How one longs for a reversal, that of even nothing happening and everyone thinks government will do some good thing.