Accents
An open Letter to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
Dear Glo:
Can I call you Glo? Probably not. But feel free to call me Julie.
Others call you Ate Glo. Still others say “Ate Glow” although they know you are far from being aglow with the traits they look up to as the helmswoman to steer the course of Bayan Ko. Ate Glow? You know, the mockery bit. What I see is the sheen of glow worms in the façade that hides shame, disgrace, and dishonor. I cannot affix the respectful “Ate” because I’m much older than you are Neither can I use the endearing term “Inday” or “Neneng” because then I would be so untrue to myself.
Do you know that in all the mileage of keyboard pushing I’ve done, I never did prefix your name with “Pres.” or “President”? The fact is reading or hearing “Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo” always sends me to allergic bouts, leading to failing health. I can’t, for the life of me, dismiss from my mind the “Hello, Garci” hot call for the votes that made you Queen of this benighted Pinoy kingdom teeming with dirt rags, okay, trapos, the scandalous term, . I forgot how many millions of votes you wanted Garci to manipulate as edge over your rival. See, Glo, don’t blame me if I have always harbored the thought that you are a fake President.
But there was a time when I so wanted to place you on the pedestal as “Her Excellency the President.” That was when the TV flashed a kapitbisig shot of you, Cory Aquino, and Franklin Drilon marching for the ouster of Pres. Joseph Estrada. It turned out Cory Aquino, Franklin Drilon, and a host others like me were utterly wrong, flat on our faces with disappointment as your rule unfolded and continue to unfold till the day of the kid gloves treatment of the perpetrators of the Maguindanao massacre.
Remember December 30 when you announced that you won’t run in the 2004 elections? Glo, you are a LIAR (yes, in bold capitals). And to lie on Rizal Day—what a desecration of our national hero. Rizal must be turning in his grave the day you filed your candidacy for President. You could have redeemed yourself that early, considering how much tarnished your glorified reputation was by then. Leave Malacañang Palace, join an NGO or support some cause-oriented group with all the pelf you have amassed thus far. But politics of the Pinoy kind is your sweet cup of tea that got you holy anointed. The cup runneth over, always full, it never gets you inebriated. So pour on. Who thinks of stopping?
Now you are running as one of the Representatives from Pampanga even as you continue to savor the perks of being a Malacañang occupant while controlling the wheeling-and-dealing in the run-up to the 2010 elections, in full charge of the machinations like the astute politician that you are. With a House seat being no brainer and your cohorts being in the majority in Congress, how nice to dance the Cha Cha again, easily amend the Constitution, establish a federal government, and sit as Prime Minister. Neat, huh. Insatiable appetite for power from the politician par excellence!
Gush, rather crass of me to unburden the pain of the Maguindanao massacre by putting down you and your administration. Did your Queenship drop a tear? Did you grieve? Up to now, I get misty-eyed reading about lives butchered, 64 at the latest count. Children who lost their fathers and mothers. Wives who lost their husbands, husbands who lost their wives. In the most gruesome, grisly, ghastly way. What other adjectives shall I use? Hideous. Repugnant. Worse than Iraq and Afghanistan, our friend Pet Melliza said it best. The 64 were unarmed civilians; they were no combatants. The biggest haul of journalists slaughtered who were there for democracy to thrive. The barbarity of it all. One for the Guinness Book of World Records.
I called you Garci’s phone pal in last week’s column. Coarse? Let me try something erudite and insightful. Maybe a quote from the Bard of Avon: “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods,/They kill us for their sport.” In King Lear, Shakespeare likens men to insignificant flies that wanton boys play with, and that gods play with men’s fate like the boys do with the flies. The gods in Maguindanao are the warlords, right Glo? Political dynasties capable of abject cruelty and senseless brutality, right again Glo?
Show us how you act out the “small but terrible” epithet by the extreme punishment to be meted out on the perpetrators of the Maguindanao massacre. If your administration cannot exact the commensurate justice, then don’t you forget, it’s going to be sic transit Gloria mundi (capital G intended). Crass and coarse? Damn it, Glo, it’s not going to be business as usual.
Most truly yours,
Julie Lagoc
San Antonio, Oton, Iloilo 5020
(Email: lagoc@hargray.com)
