Possibilities

What struck me immediately was how much of a sea change it was from not too long ago. That was P-Noy appearing at the Atrium in MegaMall last Sunday to attend an exhibit of the life and times of his father, Ninoy, on the latter’s 28th death anniversary.

Shortly after he delivered some impromptu remarks, he toured the exhibit, or tried to. He was mobbed by reporters before he could do the full rounds and be interviewed on a variety of subjects. A crush of people swirled about, some looking with curiosity at the crowd that had gathered around the President while others, ordinary shoppers lured into the mall by a sale, went about their deadly serious business of shopping. A handful of security men slid about, doing their jobs without being obtrusive or abrasive. It might have been just another movie star that had graced the mall, except that movie stars have been known to be a lot flashier and their bodyguards a lot pushier.

What a difference a year makes. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo could never have materialized in a mall with a light security in tow to talk to a crowd. Reporters would have been the last to mob her with interview in mind. Indeed, the ambush would have been more literal than journalistic. She could never have gone there without wangwangs to announce her arrival and without the Sunday throng at a mall, which now beats Sunday attendance in church, being parted like the Red Sea to make way for her.

She could never have talked to an audience consisting of three floors of onlookers without her voice being drowned out by noises of disapproval or indeed by more grievous physical displays of it. Someone in the crowd, if not a journalist himself, might have been tempted to hurl old shoes at her, the way an Iraqi journalist did at George W. Bush, with the greeting, “Here’s your goodbye kiss, you dog!”

Neither could Ferdinand Marcos during P-Noy’s father’s time. Even before he got sick and had to avoid crowds for fear of a virus inflaming his lupus. Germs were the least of his worries. His people were first. He never saw the difference between the two in any case.

Which shows how very much alike he and Arroyo were. Both were illegitimate rulers, both were despotic rulers, both were unloved rulers. Both needed to build a moat around their palaces, or persons, metaphorically or probably even literally—Malacañang had barbed wire and sandbags strewn around it during Marcos’ time and at least soldiers in combat gear gamboling about in Arroyo’s time—to feel reasonably safe.

Makes you wonder again about the charge that nothing has really changed from Gloria’s time to P-Noy’s time. Having a ruler you know is out to screw you and one you know is out to help you is not the difference between night and day?

P-Noy’s appearance at a mall during his father’s death anniversary—he stood out, lean and lank in black while everyone wore yellow; this was an occasion after all to mark a death, or indeed an assassination—carried a world of meaning in itself. More than what he said or what the video presentation said, his being there, talking to his people, being one with his people, spoke loudly about the struggle against tyranny, about the struggle for freedom. This was what not having a Marcos or Arroyo meant. This was what having a true leader meant.

This was what being free meant.

From the other end, P-Noy’s ability to become like fish in water, as the activists put it, when he is with the people made me wonder why he isn’t unleashing the full potential of the people to make the Impossible Dream a little less impossible.

In his brief remarks, P-Noy noted that Marcos had deals like Westinghouse that robbed the country blind, as his father pointed out, while Arroyo had deals like the sale of second-hand helicopters to the military that robbed the country blind. Precious little seemed to have changed after 30 years. Corruption remained as mind-boggling as ever. Fighting corruption remained as pressing as ever.

Well, the reason for that was right there. The people were there, but they had never really been enlisted or conscripted in the fight against corruption. Government alone cannot defeat it, even the most well-meaning one, even the most resolute one, even the most dedicated one. It needs the people to fight corruption along with it.

It needs the people to see the corrupt as no better than the snatchers and pickpockets they beat up to an inch of their lives when they corner them in sidewalks. It needs the people to see that graft is not money officials steal from each other, it is money the corrupt steal from them, money that could have gone to food, medicine and the kids’ notebooks. It needs the people to hold the corrupt in such contempt the corrupt would do themselves and their families a favor to depart this world permanently.

I saw P-Noy in the bosom of his public last Sunday, and I wondered if he might not be the President to discover just that, to do just that. He might not be as charismatic as Erap, whom the poor saw as savior, the one who would do in life as he did in movies, which was to use his fists to single-handedly save an oppressed community from the evil gangland boss. He might not be as magnetic as his father, who saw himself as the returning exile, if not hero, the one who would come home to the welcoming embrace of his people, yellow ribbons wrapped around trees as far as the eye could see, who would make the impossible dream replace the unending nightmare. But if P-Noy discovers the missing link, the power of his people, he might in his own quiet way go farther than even his parents went, more boldly where others have not gone before.

I saw P-Noy in the embrace of his people last Sunday, and I saw—Possibilities.