No Philippine president
looms large as a revered figure in the national memory. This is probably the
reason we have no Mt. Rushmore, no memorial for a president on a grand,
towering scale. The satraps of Mr. Marcos tried to carve a false tribute on a
very public part of a mountainside up North. But like the felled statues of
Stalin, the faux tribute to our homegrown despot was demolished by the wrath of
history.
But this is not saying that
we have had no presidents of real consequence.
Men of a
certain age remember Manuel Luis Quezon, the Commonwealth president. The fire
in the belly, his uncompromised nationalism, the efforts to promote a national
language that would be our lingua franca and our cultural soul were
complemented by a larger-than-life image and his colorful governing expletives.
Did he
deal with the dissidents of his time via his surrogates to promote the grand
bargain of peace? Did he use Congress to pass BBL-like legislation to secure
the peace?
No. Our
undying memory of Quezon was his trip to Arayat, Pampanga to talk peace and
about peasant insurgency with the leading Socialist leader, the mayor himself,
Casto Alejandrino. Did he engage in empty talk about securing the peace? No. He
turned over to Casto the 100 hectares of his own land – for redistribution to
the peasants – very near the foot of the dormant volcano in an act of supreme
sincerity and selflessness. That was a time feudalism was in full flowering, an
era bereft of a rough draft, a seminal concept even, of a land reform policy.
Casto had
a term for what Quezon did, praxis, the glorious merger of theory and practice.
In
another scene, in the capital town of San Fernando, we had Perico (Pedro Abad
Santos), the founder of the Socialist Party, personally confronting Quezon
about the unjust agrarian structure prevailing then. Perico harangued Quezon
while his brother, Quezon’s trusted aide Jose Abad Santos (later to be
martyred) watched helplessly, afraid to rein in his agitated brother. Imagine
for a minute that scene: The president of the republic and the head of the
major dissident group arguing about social and economic justice, with the dissident
scolding down the president.
Then,
there are still old men still holding on to their keepsakes – pins and buttons
which simply said “Magsaysay is my Guy.
So
cherished was RM’s memory that a brother ran on nothing except his cluelessness
and the revered name of his president-brother and was overwhelmingly elected
senator of the realm. Senator No Talk, No Mistake ended up a sorry bust but he
was not run out of town because of the people’s respect for The Guy. There is
still a healthy debate on whether the greatness of RM was for real – or a
Landsdale-manufactured thing. But that has yet to dent the fact that Ramon
Magsaysay is a president deeply loved and remembered.
Question.
What do you think will be history’s verdict on Mr. Aquino?
His last
SONA on Monday was notable for two things, the fantasy statistics and his plea
to history. He wants a secure place in history as a game-changing leader who,
in his own words, tried his best to change the corrupt culture of governance
and succeeded against overwhelming odds. And made life better for his people in
the process.
Ok, will
this generation and the next regard him as such – a game-changing leader?
The quick
answer is this. No. As a leader, he will be listed under these two categories.
A president of little or no consequence. Or, neither here nor there.
Contrary
to Mr. Aquino’s deeply-held belief, glowing statistics do not make a great
president. Growth rates, credit upgrades, the jailing of crooked rival
politicians are good for newspaper headlines and are of supreme interest to
parachuting foreign journalists who want to write, for a change, about the
transition of the country from a “ failed state” to one “open for business.”
But when
all the gains from these economic upswings are vacuumed up by the top economic
brackets, and when gains from labor are meager and just enough for basic
survival, those statistics are meaningless to ordinary lives.
To be
well-remembered by history, a president has to be two things: larger-than-life
in the hearts and minds of his people or a president with life-changing
policies. After Mr. Aquino delivered his SONA, I went around the areas in and
around the Commonwealth Avenue Batasan neighborhood. I asked the magti-tinapa,
mag-papandesal, magtataho, those struggling for survival under the downpour,
about Mr. Aquino’s last SONA.
I was met
with terrifying indifference, with blank stares, with why-would-we-care
–about-the-SONA treatment.
Inside
the Batasan, Mr. Aquino indeed preached to his choir, the small body that
represented the business and political elite. The enthusiastic and genuine
applause, the expression of gratitude for the Aquino presidency, this was duly
noted by the papers, came from Big Business.
Outside,
under the gloom of the overcast skies, the last SONA had two tragic images of
Mr. Aquino’s presidency. The president barricaded from his people and protected
by the anti-riot police and the giant effigy of Mr. Aquino set on fire and
readily engulfed by the raging flames.
In 2010,
in the first BS Aquino SONA, the protesters were gingerly about their every
move, afraid that the citizens themselves would lynch them should they do
something over-the-top.
Five
years later, the crowds cheered as the Aquino effigy was consumed by the raging
fire.
Marlen
Ronquillo
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