Cathartic moments

Cathartic (adj.) and catharsis (noun) are hardly words commonly used to describe the feelings of those who have been following the live-streamed hearings/investigations at the Senate and the House of Representatives of various crimes that involved government officials. But the feelings are real. How else to call viewers’ reactions such as, “Hay, salamat, nabuking din.” (Thank heavens, she/he has been exposed.) Or, “At long last!” To the culprits, “Buti nga sa ’yo!” (Good for you!). And “I feel good!” with James Brown’s all-time hit as soundtrack. Make mine Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra.”

Catharsis is the process of releasing repressed and suppressed emotions thereby providing relief from inner burdens. Certain stimuli can trigger catharsis that come in the form of tears, exclamations, and pleasurable feelings.

If I said last week that many people find the hearings entertaining, so that they put their favorite telenovelas on hold, it is not because the hearings on the Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos) that brought crime and moral decay in this county are a joke or a circus. It is because the secrets that have been unearthed, the lies that have been exposed and the false personas that have been unmasked at the hearings can form part of plots in a crime series or spy novel one cannot put down. To follow the investigations, one needs concentration and interest to hold on until the last page, so to speak, or until new characters and subplots emerge. They are great fare for the inquisitive, investigative mind, a minefield for those who lie. And for journalists, they are sources of news leads for stories they can secretly pursue and explore on their own.

So, why not be entertaining and cathartic at the same time? Not often do the two present themselves and in an unlikely venue at that.

Bumbling liars, breakthrough admissions, unasked follow-up questions on the part of the inquisitors (Arrrgh, please ask!), surprise witnesses, secrets bared. Never mind lapses in grammar and pronunciation on the part of the investigating members of the Senate and House committees. These are not public speaking contests. These are muckraking efforts, honest-to-goodness spade work. I use muckraking in the positive sense here, not as first used by US President Theodore Roosevelt referencing the man with the muck rake in John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”

Who would not feel relief to find out that elected mayor of Bamban, Tarlac, Guo Hua Ping, alias Alice Guo, has been arrested as a fleeing fugitive, unmasked, found that she is not Filipino after all but a Chinese national carrying fraudulent citizenship documents and a person of interest in the illegal goings-on in Pogos? An alleged spy for China even. Sure, one gets a bad feeling upon learning that Filipinos have been had (nabudol, naloko), but there is relief in knowing that the truth is out and courtroom dramas are not far behind.

Who would not feel unburdened in knowing that massive corruption with the connivance of government bureaucrats has been unearthed in government agencies? At the Department of Education, no less? Nothing new there but the process of unearthing and watching things unfold live in the hearings brings feelings of catharsis. Albeit momentarily perhaps until the handcuffed villains are brought to the courts, tried, and sentenced to serve a lifetime in prison. Still, where did all the money go?

Isn’t it cathartic to learn who plotted the 2020 murder of Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office board secretary Wesley Barayuga? Because he knew too much? The how, the why. That it was all about money, power, and dangerous liaisons, grist for a sex-lies-and-violence teledrama series. Watching it all unravel and end in an explosive denouement in real-time, in real life, will be cathartic indeed.

May these cathartic moments that marked the investigations translate into real-life moments—justice for the aggrieved, punishment for the guilty, retribution, restitution, and restoration of faith in divine justice in a world of lies, and belief that truth is a force.

On another note, we are now momentarily distracted by the wannabes who filed their certificates of candidacy for next year’s elections, wannabes who might again turn the campaign and the electoral process into a circus. The filing process itself, with big brass bands and jesters brought in, gave us a glimpse of what could be. But we must never forget how, in 2009, 58 persons were murdered, 32 media workers among those hastily back-hoed into mass graves after they were waylaid while accompanying a candidate’s wife who was filing her husband’s candidacy. Even passengers of a passing car were not spared. We must remember the Ampatuan massacre in Maguindanao, that gruesome election-related brutality that has no equal in Philippine history.

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