Kadiri
Conrado de QuirosFrankly, I cannot understand why Miguel Zubiri wants to win a place in the Senate in these circumstances. That is of course merely a rhetorical way of putting it. I do know why he does, but it has nothing to do with things fathomable by reason. It has to do only with the same things associated with the current head of state: ambition, unscrupulousness, greed.
I can understand the capacity for barefaced wrongdoing among Zubiri's older counterparts, elected or non-elected, like the congressmen who killed the impeachment bid or the crackpots who are mounting a reign of terror in the guise of the antiterror law. This is the end of the line for them. They have nowhere else to go. They have to make their last stand, make hay while the sun shines, go into the void fighting and kicking, three mixed metaphors for the same mixed-up nastiness they do. Desperation may not be the natural prerogative of the old, but it is at least their natural habitat.
Zubiri is still young. And though he did not particularly distinguish himself as a congressman, notwithstanding a ponderous resume, complete with Technicolor markers, that he gave out during the campaign, the istambays in my neighborhood can produce thicker ones, including in them the accomplishment of being born, he has the clean-shaven good looks to buoy up the hopes of Gen X or Y or Z. Not quite incidentally, he did admit he was one of the biggest spenders in the campaign, spending more than the allowable limit for ads on TV and print. His excuse was that it was imperative for him to apprise the public of his feats, as though that did not apply to the other candidates, and that he was the least of the big spenders, as though being a minor-league law-breaker vitiated the law-breaking.
Zubiri is still young, and has the whole world ahead of him. If he had conceded the elections, as he should have by everything that we hold dear as a people, or used to, which includes decency, fair play, and plain not being kapalmuks, he could have run in 2010 again with much goodwill from the public to blow his sails like a benign wind. If he had conceded the 12th spot, as he should have by everything that history decrees to be true and self-evident, the most truthful and self-evident of all being that tyrannies end and end badly for those that mount them, he might have lost a battle but won a war.
As it is, well, Zubiri is still young, but he has grown even older than Juan Ponce Enrile and Luis Villafuerte, if such is possible. Or he is still young, but only in the sense of Dorian Gray, a vampiric youth that belies crumbling age. The students in schools, particularly those in college, keep asking for speeches and talks that put out before them examples of people, notably youth like themselves, to follow or emulate. Well, that should be easier now, if only in the negative sense: Just give them an example of what not to follow or emulate, one that should carry a label not unlike the titles of movies of yore, like "Immoral," "Huwag Tularan" and "Ipagbawal."
Before the Maguindanao votes were opened some weeks ago, Zubiri said airily that he was prepared to accept defeat if those votes would show him to have lost, but was Koko Pimentel ready to do the same? Well, easy to say you'll accept defeat if there is no way in hell you can lose, no thanks to luck or capability. If Zubiri was truly prepared to accept defeat, he should have accepted defeat there and then.
Those votes are the "Hello Garci" votes of the 2007 elections. They are not votes, they are blights. Any vote manufactured by Lintang Bedol, counted by Benjamin Abalos, certified by the Comelec and affirmed by GMA is as believable as any anti-terrorism campaign manufactured by Juan Ponce Enrile, carried out by Norberto Gonzales, interpreted by Raul Gonzalez and affirmed by GMA. Indeed any vote that claims the life of a Musa Dimasidsing is as acceptable as any anti-terror campaign that claims the life of a Jonas Burgos.
Those votes may be entered into the records of the elected only in the same way that a bull's leavings may be entered among the dishes on a buffet table.
The question in fact is not whether Zubiri is prepared to accept defeat if Bedol's votes show him to have lost. The question is whether he is prepared to go to jail for them when this regime is over, as all tyrannies will be over by explosion or implosion. The question is whether he is prepared to share a jail with Bedol and every public official who can, and must, be prosecuted the way Erap has been prosecuted for his sins, when this reign of terror is gone, as all reigns of terror go, or let's stop believing in heaven and hell.
Indeed, the question is whether he is prepared to live a living hell before the final retribution, while being deluded enough to think it is heaven, the object of sufferance by his peers, the object of ridicule of the gallery, and the object of opprobrium of the citizenry. Antonio Trillanes did say he wouldn't abide a cheat as his seatmate, a consummation he might very well get in the bitterly ironic sense of continuing to languish in jail while Zubiri takes Pimentel's seat in the Senate. Zubiri has threatened to file a libel case against him for that statement, uttered outside the protection of the privilege speech, as for other statements questioning his right to walk among the anointed. Well, feel free to include me in that suit too because I will recognize only 11 new senators in the Senate. I consider it my privilege as a free man (which will not stop in and with jail) to say those things.
It does not profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? It profits a man even less if he gains a Senate seat and carries a name that will henceforth only rhyme with Kadiri.
