Scary

I remember a scene from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” where Eli Wallach is taking a bath and someone appears with gun in hand and murder in mind. The would-be killer gloats over his position and rants about how sweet vengeance is. Suddenly, Wallach’s gun fires from under the soapsuds and the fellow slumps to the ground. Wallach says: “You want to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”

It’s good advice, and one prosecution would do well to heed. Franklin Drilon actually said pretty much the same thing after Giorgidi Aggabao began by prefacing Article 3 and ended up tripping over a thorny point. Prosecution, Aggabao said, would prove that Corona allowed the Supreme Court to flip-flop on its decisions. Juan Ponce Enrile questioned the word “allowed,” demanding to know how much power the Chief Justice held over his Court. Which was a most discomfiting moment for prosecution.

You know Serafin Cuevas will object to death, you know Enrile will want things spelled out, you know defense’s defense against Corona’s partiality is collegial decision-making by the justices, and you don’t take exceptional care in formulating your position? How hard could it have been to say that Corona personally undertook measures to reverse or undo final decisions? Such as in the Fasap (Flight Attendants’and Stewards’Association of the Philippines) case?

Just as well, Neri Colmenares did have a point about the Senate being more than a Senate when constituted as an impeachment court and was not bound by separation of powers. But did he have to deliver an entire speech on it? At one point, he reminded me of what Winston Churchill said to someone who could not stop talking: “Madame, can you please keep some of your thoughts to yourself?”

By the time, prosecution got to actually asking questions from their witnesses, I was near to dozing. Which was a pity, because Bob Anduiza, Fasap president, had a most interesting thing to say. Which was how after winning their case three times with the Supreme Court—first, by a decision in their favor, subsequently by the Supreme Court denying PAL’s motion for reconsideration twice—they suddenly found themselves back to where they started. Courtesy of a simple letter Estelito Mendoza, PAL’s lawyer, wrote begging the Court do so.

I don’t know though how damning Anduiza’s testimony was to Corona personally. The proof as it stood last Tuesday remained indirect: After Corona had inhibited himself from the case, he suddenly took part in it—again by way of his name not appearing as inhibitor—and, voilà, the case was reopened. Will that be enough? Abangan.

Meanwhile, good advice: You want to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.

* * *

Barely have we recovered from Tropical Storm “Sendong” than we are visited by another disaster in another part of the country. Thankfully, its scale of devastation was nowhere near Sendong. I have friends who are stout of heart or strong of stomach who were unnerved by what they saw in Cagayan de Oro in the wake of Sendong: bodies lined up on the shore and ditches, the funeral parlors unable to take in the brain-numbing number of the dead.

Thankfully, the 6.8 earthquake that struck Negros Oriental, which rocked even neighboring Cebu violently, did not whip up a tsunami. That is the more dreaded effect of earthquakes, the one thing that razed Aceh and neighboring places in the Indian Ocean earthquake of 2004 and brought Japan to heel last year, causing deadly leakages in its nuclear plants. That was what the Negrenses and Cebuanos braced for, after scampering out of houses and buildings as the earth heaved. Thankfully, it did not come.

But tell that to the family of 8-year-old Bernadette Raidan whose body was broken when a wall collapsed on her. Tell that to the families of the more than 50 others—and still counting—who were buried in rubble or in mud from the landslides triggered by the upheaval. Another disaster, another flood of tears.

It’s getting scarier than ever, you can’t feel safe anymore anywhere on this planet. You know something’s wrong when earthquakes happen with the frequency and ferocity they now do. There were several of them last year alone, the direst ones being the Japan quake and the one that hit Christchurch, New Zealand. They are sudden, and they are unpredictable.

Of course you won’t lack for cynics who will insist this is just a periodic cycle the planet goes through. But as the disasters pile up every year, they now sound like the tobacco companies insisting there’s no correlation between cigarettes and cancer. The planet is in a cancerous state, and there’s little sign of remission.

I don’t know that we should be reduced to utter powerlessness in the face of this. We can always add our voices to those protesting the levels of carbon emissions of the United States and China, and forcing the US in particular to abide by the Kyoto Protocol. That’s certainly far saner than allowing more American troops in this country. The country’s problem is not terrorism—and only a handful of countries in the world, including us, still regard the US as the scourge of it—it is disasters. Some natural disasters are human-made as well. A policy of poisoning the earth to sustain an unsustainable lifestyle is one of them.

Just as well, we can always adopt a more secular attitude to things. Whether Christian or pagan, you’ve got to believe that God helps only those who help themselves. The even scarier thing is the wanton way we lay waste on Nature, which have made catastrophes even more catastrophic. That’s what adds landslides to floods and earthquakes. And we rest our fate with Providence: There but for the grace of God walks the Filipino.

I’m not knocking prayer, but best to do as the man says, “Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition.” Or in our case, “Praise the Lord, and stop the deforestation.”