What could have been a black day for the Feast of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo has been averted. There was no terrorist attack, as President Aquino himself had warned. The mammoth procession that is the highlight of the annual feast pushed through with hardly a hitch, with devotees of the highly venerated Catholic icon swarming over it, their number seeming to have increased from last year’s celebration, fighting for a chance to get even the slightest tap or stroke of the wooden image, believed to endow whoever touches it with miraculous powers.
If we are to believe the alarm, the miracle of Jan. 9, 2012 is that no bomb exploded amid the throng of devotees; no one got hurt, except for the usual cases of people fainting from asphyxiation and the sheer oppressive press of humanity. Peace reigned in a procession that, much like the feast of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain, where revellers let loose the bulls and test their courage against the animals’ chase and goring horns, is particularly noted for its violence and mayhem. After all, Quiapo’s Black Nazarene comes from Mexico, a land of machismo, where fiestas are as much a religious celebration as a test of manhood. In fact, the Nazareno feast exalts Christ as he manfully carries his cross to Calvary and certain crucifixion, his ultimate rite of passage from fullness of humanity to fullness of divinity, commemorated and reenacted in this land of Malay machos and chauvinists by ordinary men and, perhaps, ordinary women, wishing redemption from their casual anonymity and mediocre wants, desiring initiation into the word of fullness and triumph, becoming the selves they seek to be, invincible like the Black Nazarene, whom no thorny crown, scourge and cross could break.
Perhaps it is in the same misogynistic light that we should see the gesture of the President of making an extraordinary television address before the nation, warning the millions of devotees expected to attend the Quiapo feast that they presented a “very tempting” target to extremists. Departing from his usual weekend schedule, Mr. Aquino broke his Sunday rest to appear grim and determined on TV and announce that he had ordered security forces to be on high alert and that risks would be lessened if people stayed at home. He would have looked more macho if he had donned a more bondage-looking leather jacket, and if he had just stood there alone, without Executive Secretary Pacquito Ochoa and Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, looking puny and shabby behind him.
Despite the poor styling of the TV address, the President and his men should be commended for making the timely warning. It is not known whether the warning was related to a travel advisory to American citizens issued by the US Department of State days earlier and stating there were “risks of terrorist activity in the Philippines” and that “terrorist attacks could be indiscriminate and could occur in any area of the country, including Manila.” Although such an advisory is almost obligatory around this time of the year, when tourists from the North flock to the South to escape the harsh winter, the latest warning sounded too precise and even sweeping for comfort, mentioning the Philippine capital as a potential arena for terrorist mischief.
Because the coast is now clear and questions linger about the nature of the alleged threat last Monday, it is time to come clean and make public the intelligence input that went into the decision to raise the terrorist alert. If the threat is a continuing one, there is more reason for the government to explain to the public its real nature and extent. If the threat is not fully explained, then the President could be accused of laying the predicate for something sinister. Or he risks being regarded like the boy who cried wolf.
Coming as the terror alarm did shortly after the Department of Tourism had unveiled its new campaign, the sight of the President going on nationwide TV to urge people to stay home instead of attending the Black Nazarene procession hardly inspired confidence. He even bandied the possibility of canceling the procession altogether. Ironically the alarm delivered by the President merely buttressed the call of critics of the DOT campaign to stop indulging in expensive marketing gimmickry to sell the Philippines to tourists because the problem of the country is more fundamental: lack of peace and order.