Home 
Dolpo read today?s essay with a disbelieving smile. It was the conclusion of a trilogy of essays his favorite columnist was doing to poke satiric fun at the oligarchy. He blamed them for the country?s present predicament. The writer wove this thesis inside a narrative which put him, Dolpo, as main character. The essays made him laugh but he found the ending too unbelievable.
Today?s essay brought forth into the discourse the character of the aging activist. Plutarko was a former community organizer. In the time of the great dictator, he made a living buying and selling fighting cocks. It was a good front for one who coordinated revolutionary cells all over the country. And he actually made a lot of money and made contact with small, medium and big-time politicians. They bought his cocks. He knew what was going on better than anyone of his peers, including those reformed oligarchs who composed the majority of the central committee.
When martial law ended he got himself elected town mayor at the smallest town he had ever visited in his travels. But in time he lost the post and used his contacts with old traditional politicians to get himself a good appointive post in government. Traditional politics was back in vogue but the traditional politicians needed to build networks with the grassroots. These networks were all-important during election time. At first, Plutarko wondered about the rightness of all these. But the operational term among NGO types at that time was critical collaboration.
Plutarko lifted his nose to smell the air. He could see where everything was going. It was going back to pre-martial law conditions with the stench of chaos and revolution rising ever slowly. As in the old days, the government claimed economic progress while the people ate less and less and jobs became ever scarcer. The levels of corruption grew so high they could not keep it off the papers. ?It is inevitable,? he thought. Corruption had become a weapon for those who sat in the bayonet thrones of power. And they wanted to sit indefinitely. His political backer was asking him if he was interested in an elective post. He wondered if he should start selling fighting cocks again.
Dolpo put the folded newspaper he had just finished reading under his arm. The end result of his plan was simple. His son was sick of a debilitating illness inside the BBRC. He imagined them together as cellmates. He imagined his contact of friends, teachers, students, writers, musicians, artists, intellectuals, the book lovers who bought his books. He imagined them visiting him in jail from time to time to bring medicine for his son, who was only sick with tuberculosis, nothing as serious as would not be cured by regular doses of antibiotic. He knew his friends. They would come. Dolpo was certain of it. It was only a simple dream. But it would come true only if he got himself arrested for the pettiest of crimes, something that could get him maybe 2 to 5 years if he pleaded guilty.
Plutarko decided he was going back to buying and selling chicken. He had his resignation letter in his bag. He stood on the sidewalk at Sanciangko corner Leon Kilat Street, took out his cell phone to call in his driver when the unkempt man held him by his wrist. The man was obviously hungry and without bath and quite toothless. But there was a look of understanding in his eyes, one Plutarko found quite familiar and remindful of the old days. This was the look of the poor and the oppressed who understood what was going on. He should have given him the phone and he thought he did. So he could not understand why the man continued to struggle as if waiting for some inevitable thing to happen.
The policeman at the corner had troubles of his own, sick child, etc. He just wanted to earn the P30,000 reward money and did not think twice before firing his gun into the back of the phone snatcher?s head. Too bad he got the man?s victim in between the eyes as well. Plutarko died instantly. Dolpo still held today?s local daily tight in his left fist. The policeman would claim he thought the snatcher held a weapon inside it.
Before drifting off to sleep, Dolpo lifted his eyes ever slowly onto the picture of his favorite columnist. From the newspaper page he looked back lovingly at him and smiled. He prayed to his creator for a Paradise where words were hammered into bullets and shot into hearts of evil. Still, they buried him with his son. His friends did come.
