Pathetic

“Sigurado,” said Renato Corona when asked if he expected Malacañang to get back at him for the Supreme Court’s decision ordering the immediate distribution of Hacienda Luisita to its farmers. But he doesn’t particularly care, this is a triumph for the long-suffering tenants of Hacienda Luisita.

Well, it is a triumph for them, but not one that owes to Corona’s Court, only one that owes to their own struggle to own the land they till. The farmers themselves, or their representatives, may have something to say about the suggestion that their fate is dependent on saviors in high places. The farmers of Hacienda Luisita are in fact merely the gratuitous beneficiaries of Corona’s Court’s circumstantial act of generosity. The principle being that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It’s not that Corona may expect retaliation from P-Noy for his Court having voted unanimously against Hacienda Luisita. It’s that P-Noy should have expected retaliation from Corona for impeaching him.

Indeed, completely ironically, though quite happily for the farmers, the farmers may rest easy in the thought that the Court’s ruling with finality in their favor will remain truly final. That is not what all other people awaiting justice from the Supreme Court can expect, as the Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines (Fasap) among others has found out. You can win three times with finality, but still not win at all.

The Aquino family itself has hastened to assure that it will respect the finality of the ruling against it. It’s not an ungainly gesture though it would have been a lot loftier if it had come earlier, when it would not have looked grudging or brought on by force majeure. From the start I’ve always argued for the immediate distribution of Hacienda Luisita. Of course the owners are entitled to just compensation, but that may not stand in the way of the moral imperative. There are legions of compelling reasons for it, not least the fact that it was a promise made by Cory.

Quite apart from that, I’ve always said Hacienda Luisita was more than a piece of land, it was a symbol. Distributing it, whatever its real or palpable effects—and land reform is a thing badly in need of reexamination, coming as it has too little too late in this country—signals government’s willingness to redistribute wealth. Not just land but all the bounties of this earth.

Which is a precondition for curbing poverty in this country. This is a land, as Ninoy himself pointed out in his time, spectacularly divided into rich and poor. That spectacular divide is not bridged without redistributing wealth. The poor will get poorer and the rich will get richer without redistributing wealth. Redistributing Hacienda Luisita would have struck a blow, if only symbolically—and P-Noy himself owed his presidency to the power of symbols—for that cause.

Whether the product of force majeure or not, that has happened. It’s something we can now put behind us. What we may not do so, what in fact we may only put in front of us, is Corona’s impeachment. What we may not do so, what we may in fact only want to end up in someone  behind bars, is Gloria Arroyo’s prosecution.

I don’t know that Corona really believes P-Noy will get back at him with quite literally a vengeance. His statements always reek of cynicism. But I do know it’s calculated to give some credence to his claim, hatched by his PR people, that Malacañang moved to impeach him because of his principled stand on Hacienda Luisita. He’s pushed the line for months now and gotten no traction from it, to go by his ratings which have gone into freefall. Why he should imagine that is even remotely believable, well, he should really fire his PR group for incompetence.

The timing of the Supreme Court decision on Hacienda Luisita, which is the eve of the resumption of the impeachment trial, clearly shows the stuff it’s made of. It’s not probity, it’s propaganda. Henceforth, any effort by the prosecution to reveal things that reflect on his pagkatao is getting back at him. Henceforth, any effort by P-Noy to express his opinion about his pagkatao is getting back at him. Henceforth, any desperate cry by people like Ana Basa and Sister Flory about relentless oppression from his hands is getting back at him.

It won’t get him anywhere either. If it does anything, it is only to show his growing desperation from the pummeling he is getting in the court of public opinion. He is now running a close second to his favorite non-president as the most disliked and distrusted person on this spot of earth, including the one in Tarlac called Hacienda Luisita. The storyline makes the silliest TV soap sound like “A Man for All Seasons.”

It’s a monumental exercise in miscasting, depicting as it does P-Noy as the president who cannot act without private interest in mind and himself as the chief justice who cannot make decisions without lofty principle in tow. An image reality controverts. At the very least, it can’t help him that his favorite non-president clung to power at all costs, running the country to the ground for personal gain while P-Noy avoided power at all costs, bowing to it only from force majeure. At the very most, it can’t help that he himself is a midnight appointee, betraying every principle that applies to basic decency, never mind to the highest juridical position in the land. While P-Noy—and indeed his family—has striven to live by, quite apart from preach, the tenets of the daang matuwid.

Corona may preen all he wants about the victory he has won for the farmers, but all he’ll remind us of is Macbeth’s, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more.”

Macbeth though was tragic. Corona, well, he’s just becoming more and more pathetic.