Difference

I learned about it from a friend who showed me her Facebook page. I do not—I repeat, I do not—own a Facebook or Twitter account. I do not know the people who run the ones that appear in my name. That is particularly addressed to friends, lovers and other strangers who have been complaining that I do not answer their posts. Sorry, but that is not me.

It was a minor storm, but one that left its share of debris. It had to do with the photograph of President Benigno Aquino III on a truck with his sister, Kris, and several government officials, braving the floods to bring relief to the victims. One entry on my friend’s page had the photograph blown up with the huge caption emblazoned on the picture itself, “Tutulong o nangangampanya?”

I imagined it came from the usual suspects, and maybe it did. But the reactions were not, they had spontaneity written all over them. The proposition had its share of defenders and detractors. The first group agreed that the sight left a bad taste in the mouth, it smacked of politicking, a cheap stunt for next year’s elections. The second group, which was probably more than the first but not by much, castigated the first for being professional whiners. Damn if you do, damn if you don’t. Someone put it this way, “The reason we are what we are is that you keep complaining when you could very well be getting up your ass and helping the victims. You’re worse than the floods.”

What do I think of it?

Well, you look at the photograph again and you know the usual suspects will jump on it. It should have captured the new spirit of the times, the sea change that has taken place in the nation since “Ondoy” turned Metro Manila into a virtual sea three years ago. And would have if Aquino had been in the company of relief officials, engineers and people who had every business being there. Never mind Kris, who does bring sunshine to the faces of a ragged crowd on a gray day—some relief is more appreciated than others. But not politicians. Certainly not politicians who are, or are perceived to be, running in next year’s elections.

The people who joined Aquino in that truck ought to have known better and kept their distance, or, since that is like asking an alcoholic to stay away from bars, Aquino should have put his foot down. Ondoy, which happened three years ago in roughly the same circumstances, which was on the eve of elections—or our concept of eve, which is a year or less before—should have shown the need for  delicadeza, or  kapinuhan, or sensitivity. The candidates then who plunged into relief efforts with their candidacies patently advertised got hoisted in their own petard, media panning them for their pains.

Arguably, the picture of Aquino with potential candidates in the truck, which could not possibly have escaped the notice of those determined to find fault with government, was not as bad as the pictures of candidates pasted on canned good last week. Or the pictures of candidates on relief goods after Ondoy. But it was not as good as the completely unmarked relief goods Fernando Poe Jr. meant for Infanta after the place was buried in mudslides before Christmas of 2004. FPJ had apparently insisted while he was still around that those boxes not be marked as it was tasteless. That is a gold standard in class, or being a true bida.

In the scheme of things, however, the unfortunate sight is just a hiccup in an otherwise Olympic performance by government. At the height of the rains, everyone was comparing the deluge to Ondoy with Pagasa pointing out the differences between the two. Unlike Ondoy, the rains were not a storm, they were the usual monsoon rains, or habagat, made unusual by being pulled up by a storm headed for China. Unlike Ondoy, the rains, though they exceeded Ondoy in volume, fell gradually and not in a flash, thus sparing Metro Manila the havoc of Ondoy. But in fact there was a far bigger difference between the two, vast as dark and light, stark as rain and sunshine.

That is the difference between P-Noy and Gloria, which is really the difference between last week’s rains and Ondoy. Then you did not see Gloria, and you did not see her not just because she had nothing to show for her long years of misrule but because she dared not show herself, she might end up falling into the water not by accident but by being tossed there by the irate victims of a longer-lasting storm. Now you see Aquino personally going out to direct operations, demanding as he did at Pagasa that he get as accurate a report as possible to base his decisions on, secure in the knowledge of the acceptance, if not embrace, of his people.

Then you had a government the ravaged did not wish to come to their aid, it was not the bringer of relief, it was the bringer of more pain, the only thing worse than Ondoy were public officials, the only thing more devastating than natural disasters were human ones. Now you have a government whose promises see fulfillment, or the glimmer of it, whose services see attainment, or the shape of it, whose presence in the darkest hours is a comfort to the anxious and fearful.

Then  you had a people who survived Ondoy in spite of, and not because of, government, whose special prayer, like the folk of Anatevka, was, “May God bless and keep Gloria far away from us,” whose sense of community extended only to themselves, they would get by, by themselves, with pluck and fortitude and ingenuity. Now you have a people who are beginning to believe what their President said when he said last month that things were changing, things were moving, things were improving, and that was because of government and the people, he and us, forging a community in partnership, in bayanihan.

That’s as huge a difference as it gets.