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In prayer, it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart,” Mahatma Gandhi wrote. Press Secretary Jesus Dureza did spew a mouthful in his opening prayer on Tuesday’s cabinet meeting.
He didn’t pray for Jocelyn “Joc-Joc” Bolante. Didn’t the man need grace to heed, in the P728 million fertilizer scam probe, the 8th Commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness”?
Dureza preferred to ask blessings for the new Senate President. He informed God that Juan Ponce Enrile proved himself “a man for all seasons” – a 1521 title accorded to Thomas More.
Enrile never claimed being a Thomas More. Whatever his flaws, Enrile has political savvy. He still smarts from the the odium of being martial law bouncer and backer of “God Save the Queen” coups against President Corazon Aquino.
Henry VIII had More beheaded in 1535. The chancellor refused to sanction the king’s divorce from the barren Catherine of Aragon. More declined an offer of liberty in exchange for his signature on the “Act of Supremacy.” This would have named Henry VIII, who died of syphilis, as head of the church.
In 1954, BBC radio presented Robert Bolt’s play, “A Man for All Seasons.” In it, the Duke of Norfolk badgers the imprisoned chancellor: “Think, Master More. Indignatio principis mors est (“The anger of the prince is death.”).
“Is that all, my lord?” the chancellor replied in the later Broadway play and box-office movie hit. “Then, there’s not much difference between Your Grace and myself – except that I will die today and you will die tomorrow.”
Pope Pius XI canonized More in 1935. He is today’s patron saint of lawyers, like Dureza. More’s last statement from the gallows is indelibly seared as standard for officials worldwide. “I die as the king’s good servant but God’s first.”
Dureza revels in being President’s Arroyo’s “good servant,” if not More’s standards. “Bless the President so she will have forbearance, good health, the tolerance to lead this nation up to 2010 – and perhaps, who knows, even beyond,” he prayed.
Looking embarrassed, (the President) covered her face and said: “Oh my God,” the Inquirer webpage report noted. After regaining her composure, Arroyo told cameramen and photographers: “That prayer was off the record…. Please, tama na, tama na [that’s enough].”
Kung anong bukang bibig/ Siyang laman ng dibdib, the old Filipino proverb says. (“The mouth utters what is in the heart.”) “They’ve denied repeatedly that they don’t want a term extension,” commented former social welfare secretary Corazon Soliman. “But the body language of those around the President says otherwise.”
“When you pray, do not multiply your words,” the Galilean master of prayer counseled. Pagans do that, “thinking they will get a hearing.” Was Secretary Dureza listening? His prayer stretched further than reported. “What I actually told God was: the President could serve beyond 2010 but in her personal and private capacity…. Even God has a sense of humor.”
“When God wants to play a joke on you, hijo, He will grant your prayers,” my grandmother often said. It would be a tragic gag on this country if what Dureza asked for, in a wisecrack dolled up as prayer, would be granted: more years of a corrupt administration confronted by an equally tarnished opposition.
The Senate presidency elections tossed up a choice between Barrabas and Barrabas. There were no conflicts in vision or differences in governing policies. Monday’s vote was nothing more than today’s headcount of the ambitious jockeying for advantage in the 2010 polls. This state of affairs will last until the scramble for advantage dictates yet another headcount. That could be tomorrow, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. scoffs.
This straps a premium on mediocrity. We’re being locked again into lesser-evil choices. Could anything be more absurd than a coup plotter, like Enrile, being sworn into the Number Three office in the land by a man who failed in every coup he staged, Gringo Honasan? But “in politics, the absurd need not be a handicap,” the emperor Napoleon once said.
There is a disconnect between the lives of ordinary citizens and the dynasties that control power. Political incest is the prevailing rule here. Look at the Arroyos, the Estradas, the Cayetanos, the Singsons, etc. The straightjacket of elite rule forecloses chances of untangling problems dumped by generations of Barrabases.
The elbow room, meanwhile, narrows for solving critical problems that people confront in daily life: shoddy schools, water shortages, collapse of the public health system, a looming fish supply crisis, festering insurgencies. Overall, a suffocating culture of impunity persists.
That Joc-Joc Bolante will get away is the latest version of this impunity. That follows impunity for crooks in the Mega Pacific election computers, ZTE broadband and the euro generals. And how wretched the country where officials cling to public office only by making mothers like Edith Burgos futilely search for their “disappeared” children.
We’re told that solutions will ultimately come not from traditional dynasties but from ordinary citizens who slog at daily duties and share with the poor. But, alas, they cannot count on Press Secretary Dureza’s prayers.
