‘Wangwangs’

I READ the speech later in the newspapers and it sounded nothing like the one P-Noy delivered. The performance was the thing. It made all the difference.

I disagree completely with those who were not impressed by P-Noy’s State of the Nation Address (Sona). It was one of the best speeches I’ve heard.

First off, I don’t know how anyone can fail to realize how P-Noy has become the best public speaker among the presidents of the last half-century. Better than Marcos, better than Erap, better than Cory, and certainly better than Fidel Ramos and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. He wasn’t like this a couple of years ago. Then he tended to be rambling and unsure of himself. Today, he is perfectly focused and sees where he’s going. The matuwid na daan may have something to do with that. But the improvement shows a remarkable learning curve.

Two things have made him the best speaker among the presidents of the last half-century. The first is that he speaks in Pilipino. I don’t know too how anyone can fail to grasp the power of that. That is a message unto itself. It’s driven home by the foreign community in attendance wearing earphones to listen to the translation. Which is as it should be. Then it was the Filipinos who might as well metaphorically, or probably even literally, be listening to the translation. It stands the world on its feet where before it used to stand on its head.

What P-Noy is saying with a Sona in Filipino is: “I am talking first and last to my people. I want the state of the nation to be known first and last by my people. If the rest of you want to know what I’m saying, keep up. If not, pasensyahan na lang tayo.” When P-Noy says he wants a Philippines for Filipinos, you believe him.

The second is that he writes his own speeches. I do not doubt for one minute the Malacañang reports that he does. That whatever help he gets comes in the form of inputs, that in the end he’s the one who sits down and puts his thoughts into words. That’s what makes you listen to him, however his speech takes quite a while to get to the end of the road, matuwid or not. He’s not just reading a speech, he’s trying to communicate. He’s not just taking on a necessary burden, he’s unburdening himself of his concerns. The words come straight from the heart.

That should dispel the accusations about him not being his own man. If his speeches are anything to go by, he is one president with a mind of his own.

As to the Sona itself, I loved the wangwang metaphor. For reasons that go beyond literary—though why shouldn’t presidents be literate as well?—for reasons that owe to substance. Wangwang becomes the symbol of abuse, which happens not just in the streets but in public life in the form of corruption and even in private life in the form of individuals shirking obligation, such as by not paying taxes. That has been the bane of this country in the past, especially in the immediate past.

Abolishing the wangwangs not just in the streets but in government and in society in general is the key to things. I particularly liked the detail about Pagcor having spent a billion pesos for coffee and P-Noy’s remark that with that amount of caffeine in their bloodstream the people responsible for it must still be wide awake—dilat pa ang mga mata—up to this time.

It emphasizes a point Arroyo and her allies have been at pains to dispel, with their insistence—for reasons that owe to self-interest, or survival—that P-Noy stop harping on the corruption of the past and start showing the accomplishments of the present. The two are not antithetical, they are hand-in-glove. The one does not preclude the other, the one presumes the other. You remove the corruption, the abuse, the wangwang in public life, and you assure prosperity. You punish those who practiced corruption, abuse and wangwang in public life, and you assure that it doesn’t happen again.

You raze down the corruption, the abuse, the wangwang in public life and you assure the system works. You assure government works. You assure life—and not death—goes on.

If I have any quibble about the speech at all, it is only in the plethora of details P-Noy trots out to show how the system works when you remove the wangwangs in it. Or how the daan becomes matuwid when you take out the detours. He could have been more judicious. You understand of course that he’s trying to be comprehensive, that he’s trying to show the profound and sweeping effects of a wangwang-less governance. But you can never really be comprehensive enough about this, you’ll just end up having people complaining why their particular advocacies—RH, freedom of information, the Bicol Express running again—didn’t get a mention in it. In any case, it’s unnecessary. You can always suggest the universe in a grain of sand. You can always suggest the whole in the part.

But on the whole P-Noy’s Sona was a powerful one, a persuasive one, an inspiring one. In the end, he spoke of the kind of thinking he believed ought to replace the utak wangwang, or the culture of abuse. That is the culture of doing the right thing. That is the culture of discipline, dedication, commitment. That is the culture of taking pride in your work, as an artist takes pride in his art or a craftsman in his craft, whether that work is directing traffic or teaching. Next time you see a cop untangling traffic in the rain, P-Noy said, you might want to go up to him and say thank you. Next time you see your grade school teacher, P-Noy said, you might want to go up to her and say thank you.

That, someone told me, gave her goose pimples. That, another told me, gave her a tear in the eye. Not bad, for a Sona. In the end, it was a siren’s song, of the kind that had nothing to do with the sirens that wailed.

Also called wangwangs.