Jose Maria Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, has died in exile in The Netherlands. He died a lonely man, his dream unrealized. And yet while so many more Filipinos were killed during his decades-old insurgency than probably were during the Marcos Sr. martial law years and the Duterte anti-illegal drugs war put together, the public reaction to his demise will tend to be more deferential.
If at all, the reaction of Vice President Sara Duterte is instructive of the general sentiment. "May God rest his soul" was all she said. I have never seen so much eloquence packed into just five words. It was terse and yet said so much just by leaving so many things unsaid. She is from Davao, the one place in the Philippines where the communists are scared to set foot in. You can take it up from there.
Joma, as Sison was also called, may have founded the local version of a godless ideology but he was nevertheless a member of the human race and thus a piece of God's creation. He will be judged according to God's will. But if I understand the purpose of Jesus' coming, I do not think Joma will go anywhere beyond redemption. He may be told to brush his teeth at the Pearly Gates but he will for be made to rejoin us, chastened, but in.
I remember a song called "One Tin Soldier" by the Sixties Canadian band The Original Caste that told of two peoples fighting over a treasure hidden beneath a rock. The valley people, rejecting an offer to share the treasure, annihilated the mountain people for refusing to give up what the rock had kept hidden. When the victors turned the rock over, they found a message. "Peace on Earth," was all it said.
The song is about the folly and futility of war, and it is in this context that I think Joma wasted his life on a quest that was no more than a fool's errand. I remember Salo, a character in the Kurt Vonnegut Jr. novel "The Sirens of Titan" who said: "Anybody who has traveled this far on a fool's errand has no choice but to uphold the honor of fools by completing the errand. "I believe that is what drove Joma futilely to the end.
Like VP Sara, I do not believe in ostracizing Joma now. What good will any reviling do to a dead person? His enemies and those who hated his guts have had their chance to smash those oversized teeth back into the stinking recesses of his filthy oral cavity. That chance is gone. It will not come again. And that is why I doff my hat to Inday and how she hit on the proper response by saying everything without saying anything.
And with the "bad things " being left unsaid, that " good things " are there left to say that might per chance be said. The romantic among his believers might try underscoring Joma's stewardship of " Asia's longest running insurgency." That is until somebody wises up and points out the fact that the reason the insurgency has lasted that long is because, for so long it has failed to attain its objective. Which is to say it was a failure.
Far better thinkers would have long realized the folly and futility of a given situation and, if they are still up to it, try a new tack. Reinventing and redirecting are words that suggest intelligence and learning. Dogged pursuit of something that has not worked suggests things that are best left unsaid, following Inday Sara's lead, and in deference to the public mood that is as laid back as it is perfunctory.
If there is one legacy that I long to emerge from Joma's demise, it is that with his passing may also come the end of the protracted folly that he has chosen to foist upon this country. Communism is a failed experiment. The failure may come in a snap, like getting thrown out the window, or it may come slowly, like getting led down the stairs, one step at a time. But the end of communism will come. Russia is showing signs. China too.