Ang Kape Ni LaTtEX

When I was growing up as a child in the sunset years of the Marcos regime, it was customary to label people as “loyalists” to the late dictator. Marcos, despite all his misgivings, was a deeply charismatic person, himself able to establish a cult following not unlike that of Joseph Estrada. Some people talked about him as if he were god, others can outright defend him of his actions based on nothing more than a perceived benevolence. Indeed, it was very easy to draw a line between them and us.

I was sure we weren’t loyalist back then. The house was full of those flyers with the words “Tama na! Sobra na! Palitan na!” stamped on them. I was just beginning to read and that’s what I found in the drawers along with the pens. I fold the flyers into paper airplanes.

Now we are yet again faced with the task of evicting a tyrant from Malacañang, but drawing lines have become a lot more difficult. I’m not sure if there are people who so believe in GMA that they want her to stay on forever and ever, but there are a lot of people who want her to go as in right now and there are those who think that leting her finish her term in 2010 makes a lot more sense.

Being products of the post-Marcos dictatorship era however, it is clear that all of these people mistrust Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in one way or another, and want to see her go.

Unfortunately, because of the meager representation of those who genuinely love GMA, the “she should leave, now na!” camp have gone on to discredit the “it’s better if she leaves when she’s due” camp. They chose to draw their line between black and white at the willingness to oust GMA immediately. They throw invectives at the other camp, brandishing a “you’re either with us or against us” attitude, calling them apathetic, and openly blaming the failure to oust GMA on those who do not participate on their protest activities.

But I would like to pose a challenge to them: What will you do if GMA resigns today? As in right now, the way they want it?

• Have they built a case against her?
• Have they collected enough evidence to pin her down in court?
• Can they do anything to, say, prevent her from leaving the country so she would face accountability?
• Have they planned contingencies to prevent the need for any flavor of People Power from being used again?

Point is, we cannot assume that, once Gloria steps down, she can immediately be prosecuted. I have serious fears that, if GMA is let go before anybody building a genuinely prosecutable case against her, it is tantamount to letting her go scott free. While in the case of Joseph Estrada, he was pardoned and let go the same way, at least he had to face an impeachment process, criminal prosecution and 6 years of limited-movement cottage accommodations.

And that failure to prosecute will become what this hedonistic, simplistic brand of politics will lead us to. We’ll just go much, much deeper into the pile of shit we already are in. We must instead put our act together so that GMA could be made accountable for all her wrongdoings, whether real or imagined, in a court of law.

Real life isn’t like in the movies where, when the protagonist or an ally of the protagonist comes out with “the truth”, the police will come down swooping down and the antagonist will be arrested and brought to justice. No. Our systems are built precisely to prevent that kind of heroics from ever being effective.

It is unfortunate that many of our countrymen still believe in that kind of happily-ever-after scenario. It is more unfortunate that they choose to blame those who don’t subscribe to their brand of hedonistic politics, and treat them as adversaries even if they are not.