‘Abangan ang susunod na kabanata’

True enough it’s the stuff of movies, though not of the action types Erap used to do. More the melodrama ones that featured Sharon Cuneta, or the ones that proliferate on TV today. The ones where the madrasta oppresses the legitimate daughter horribly—and interminably, the pang-aapi carried out over a long period of time, played with much conviction by the usual suspects or kontrabidas —with the oppressed in the end clawing her way out of the mud (bumangon ka sa lusak,) and bringing her oppressor to heel.

That’s how Erap sees the way his life has turned. He has postponed the scheduled, or threatened, launching of his autobiography to give room to the latest twist in his story. That twist being Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s arrest some weeks ago. That is his victory. That is his vindication. That brings the curve of his storyline full circle.

“My vindication continues, so we cannot yet close the book. The ending was supposed to be in the 2010 election, when I got the same number of votes that I got in 1998. That was complete vindication for me. E meron pa palang susunod na kabanata.”

It’s the stuff of movies of the melodrama variety. Or probably more accurately, it’s the stuff of local movies that carry the tagline “true to life.” Which is to say, it’s one of those true-to-life Filipino movies that aren’t very true to life. While it makes for a riveting movie plot, it doesn’t quite make for a faithful rendition of history.

To begin with, the fight wasn’t between Erap and Gloria, it was between Erap and Juan (de la Cruz). And Erap wasn’t the oppressed, he was the oppressor. Which was the reason he got ousted. Clearly, Erap means to give a twist, a reversal-of-fortune turn, to that story too. His concept of vindication in fact carries with it a repudiation of Edsa. That is not merely implicit, that is explicit. His autobiography, Erap says, will also show “how the so-called civil society and the Church conspired against me (to bring me down).”

That claim, of course, has found more sympathizers than a similar claim by the Marcoses about Ferdinand. But the notion that Edsa 2 was no Edsa at all because it had no people in it, only the elite were there, is plain wrong. It ignores, or overlooks, one phenomenon that occurred at the time which eclipsed the phenomenon that was Erap himself. Which was the impeachment trial. That was a bigger hit than all of Erap’s movies combined. It was an even bigger hit than all of the most popular telenovelas of the time combined, grounding the country to a halt each time it grounded on TV. That was what brought the people to Edsa II. That was what made People Power happen. That was what made it People Power.

In fact, if Arroyo’s arrest is any vindication at all, it is a vindication not of Erap but of the groups that demanded that Erap be replaced by the winner of a snap election and not by her. Popoy Lagman chief among them, whose group loudly called for “Resign all!” With good reason. Morally, because Arroyo was the least deserving of them all: The people ousted Erap not because of her but in spite of her. And legally, because Erap did not die or was incapacitated, he was overthrown. People Power is an extraordinary act, why fetter its effect to ordinary rules of succession?

That was what ruined Edsa 2. What made Arroyo’s prosecution of Erap look like persecution was not that he was innocent, but that she was guiltier. What made Arroyo’s pronouncements about Erap sound wrong was not that they were false, but that she had made a habit of lying. Arroyo’s arrest does not repudiate Edsa, it merely repudiates Arroyo. Arroyo’s arrest does not vindicate Erap, it merely vindicates P-Noy.

Yes, P-Noy because it shows the natural order of things. That is that the best person to bring a tyrant to heel is not an even bigger tyrant but a perfectly reasonable one. The best person to try someone for epic corruption is not an even bigger thief, one who has stolen soul apart from body, but an epically decent one.

Neither is last year’s election a vindication of Erap. Of course, he did very well there, not least because the near-universal detestation for Arroyo conferred a natural sympathy for those she oppressed, or was seen to have oppressed. But Erap’s version of history ignores, or overlooks, one phenomenon that occurred there that eclipsed the phenomenon that was Erap’s comeback. That was the phenomenon of P-Noy himself.

If last year’s election was a vindication of anything, it was a vindication of Edsa. The near-universal detestation of Arroyo did not just confer a natural sympathy to those she was seen to oppress, it conferred a special luminance to those who fought her, to those who sought to undo her works, to the one person who was seen as the opposite of her. Edsa was the natural pitch for P-Noy’s campaign, however that was lost on his running mate, who had little sense of history and even a littler sense of the public pulse. I’ve always referred to last year’s poll as an Edsa masquerading as an election, and I’ve meant it in every sense of the term. The people never really saw it as an ordinary election, however P-Noy’s handlers fell into that trap too, they saw it as a deliverance from Arroyo. And who better to carry it out than her opposite?

If Erap’s vindication is the repudiation of Edsa, then the opposite is just as true. The vindication of Edsa is the repudiation of Erap. All Arroyo’s fall from grace shows is that while it takes a thief to catch a thief, it takes an honest man to make sure she—or he—doesn’t get away. True enough, Erap’s story might not be over yet. But not quite in the way he expects. Maybe there’s yet another chapter to follow Gloria’s downfall.

Abangan ang susunod na kabanata.