Beware of dog

Signs reading “Cave canem” (Beware of dog) were used by the ancient Romans. But for my column today, I refer not to barking and biting dogs, but to human underdogs.

I was in a restaurant in a city in Mindanao watching the TV coverage of government officials blocking the departure of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo last Tuesday and I have to say I couldn’t help but feel some (but only some) pity for her.  It was the sight of her in a neck brace, looking helpless amid the jostling crowds, that got me.

Yet the people around me, including the food servers (that’s the non-sexist term for waiters and waitresses) didn’t seem too concerned.  Not once did I hear people use the Tagalog “awa” or the Cebuano “kalooy” for pity.

My concern is that the situation can change, with a groundswell of pity building up to unmanageable proportions, if the government continues on its present track.

The Aquino administration, despite having been in power for more than a year now, has done too little and worked too slowly to put cases together against Arroyo (or the Arroyos). Worse, they publicized their intentions too early, talking about how much evidence they had to prosecute the Arroyos, then foot-dragging on all this.  Now the chances are slim that we will even see an arraignment.

I hear “Otso-otso” being used now to label the eight justices of the Supreme Court who voted for the restraining order on the travel hold list, the term intended as an expression of contempt and derision, the justices reduced to dancing puppets as in the otso-otso dance, as well as being as intensely irritating like the skin disease that is also otso-otso.

But even if the Supreme Court is dominated by the Arroyo Otso-otso, we are bound by the Constitution’s provisions on separation of the executive (which includes the justice secretary) and the judicial branches.

There is irony though in the situation we face today.  Here are Supreme Court justices acting to defend the president who appointed them, and yet making life hard for the incumbent President.  Moreover, the need for travel watch lists are related to the slow wheels of justice.  Because it takes so long to bring a suspected criminal to court, the government just had to find ways to prevent them from absconding and escaping justice.

There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of names, on the Bureau of Immigration’s watch lists, including, incidentally, four “Michael Tan” entries in the BID database with various pending cases. Whenever I have to leave the country, I have to bring with me a BID certificate attesting that this Michael Tan is not any of the ones in their database.  (Most of the time the immigration agents will look at me even before I give the certificate and inquire, “Inquirer?”, then smile, sigh and stamp the passport.  These rogue Michael Tans’ cases date as far back as 1993.)

I am ambivalent about the watch list, not just because of namesakes on the list who make my travel slightly more inconvenient, but because of memories of martial law.  In Marcos’ time, political dissent was enough to get you on the watch list, and banned from travel.  Journalists were among those in the blacklist.

Then there were Serge Osmeña and Geny Lopez, politicians arrested and charged of plotting to assassinate Marcos.  Scions of wealthy families, they were able to escape from prison and then had to be smuggled out of the country, through a backdoor in the south because their names were on the travel hold list.  (You can search for “Escapo” on thepinoymovie.com.)

Such memories do make older Filipinos wary about the possibilities of travel hold orders becoming tools of political persecution rather than a way of preventing criminals from leaving the country.

Pathological altruism

Which takes us back to the need for the Aquino administration to give top priority to getting the legal processes going.  To drag out this tug-of-war around travel is to risk being seen as vindictive against the Arroyos, with GMA  becoming more and more of an underdog, complete with a neck collar, drawing sympathy and pity.

This siding with the underdog is not unique to Filipinos.  There is a growing body of research now on “pathological altruism,” defined in a new book as “any behavior or personal tendency in which either the stated aim or the implied motivation is to promote the welfare of another.  But instead of overall beneficial outcomes, the altruism instead has irrational . . . and substantial negative consequences.”

The book “Pathological Altruism” will be officially released in 2012 by the Oxford University Press but advanced copies (including one posted in books.google.com) have been reviewed and discussed, sometimes with heated debates, among both natural and social scientists.

Researchers say humans are wired for altruism, or to put it in local terms, most of us are “pusong mamon” or soft-hearted.  We want to help people, but sometimes this can work against us, or even the people in distress.  We are particularly vulnerable when it comes to people who look like an underdog.  The problem is that there are also sociopaths who know how to manipulate this sympathy for the underdog, and turn it to their advantage.

If charity begins at home, so too does pathological altruism.  Abusive husbands are able to appeal to their wives’ sense of altruism to stay on, for the sake of the children, or even for the seemingly repentant husband.   A similar situation is found for children abused by their parents, yet they stay on.

Susan Forward and Donna Frazier’s book, “Emotional Blackmail,” first pointed out how the abusers use “fog” (fear, obligation and guilt) to keep their victims’ loyalty.  The authors of the Oxford book use the term “pathogenic guilt” to pinpoint the root of pathological altruism and point out that some of us may be more prone to developing this kind of guilt, and pathological altruism.

It becomes more complicated when you go beyond the home into the public sphere.  In offices, someone may have broken every other rule in the book but still manage to elicit people’s sympathy by projecting an image that he is being persecuted. He will walk with a stoop, give you that haggard look, and talk softly about how he is being harassed.  In the end, the ones who are trying to bring the rogue to justice will be the ones being ostracized.

I have been to places in the Philippines ruled by the most heinous of politicians who plunder and murder but who stay in power for years, with their constituents insisting, “Mabait naman siya,”  and that if he lashes out at his enemies from time to time, it is only because he wants to protect his constituents.  If by some miracle the law finally catches up with the scoundrel and bring him to court, former constituents will weep and wail, describing how their “boss” was “dragged” to court in handcuffs. “Where is justice?” they will ask

Beware the underdog. Beware of our own pusong mamon.

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Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph