Soap opera

It makes for gripping reading, but the continuing saga now directing attention to the Bautista-Revillas indicates the dismaying, indeed schizophrenic, state of the body politic. What began as a crime story—the murder of a scion of a family highly placed in show biz and politics and the severe wounding of his girlfriend—has splintered into a soap opera of love children, injured feelings, cries of abandonment, and issues concerning money of purportedly scandalous proportions. It is all attentive observers can do to keep their eye on the ball, as it were, and not be unduly distracted by the gloss of the dramatis personae.

On the other hand, it is the people involved in what initially appeared as a crime of passion that make the story riveting. The murder of Ramgen Bautista became noteworthy not so much because he was a good-looking comer in show biz as because he was one of the many love children of an ex-member of the Senate and a half-brother of an incumbent. That his younger siblings are implicated in the crime takes the matter several notches higher in the scandal scale, suggesting as it does a jagged edge in the family dynamics that could not but draw blood. That his mother is in the terrible position of not only mourning the death of a child but also enduring the suspicion that it was perpetrated by her other children pales beside the fact that she is a mistress, apparently one among many, of a powerful man.

(The mother is actually no rara avis. Her type is commonplace in a country where divorce and artificial contraception are officially taboo but adultery is generally considered a perk of wealth and power and met with a shrug, a rolling of eyes, a wink, or nervous laughter. To be sure, Andre Maurois once wrote that “in literature, as in love, we are continually astonished by what is chosen by others.” But that is neither here nor there, and love can be stretched only to a certain degree. That she was barely legal, so to speak, when she entered into the otherwise socially disapproved union, and that, despite his liaison[s], her lover served in the government as a senator and in subsequent other responsible positions, are of a piece with the national schizophrenia. No pariahs, this, and others similarly situated, couple; only a fixture in the macho culture.)

A dispute among the siblings involving finances is said to be the motive behind the murder. As crass a discussion of money can be, particularly if it concerns money provided for the support of a mistress and love children, there is no point in dismissing it as mere gossip. There is the question of where the money came (is coming) from, and how the sire of all these progeny was (has been) able to afford the upkeep of the household that by no means appears to be hand-to-mouth, or even frugal. (The mother has posted a stream of laments in the Web about the purported paucity of wherewithal to bring up nine children—contrary, she suggested, to earlier promises made.  Something has to be said about the dependence that such relationships breed among women, but this is again part of the machismo that dictates relations between the kept and the keeper.)

Ramgen Bautista’s half-brother, Sen. Ramon Revilla Jr., has wisely stopped talking after days of obliging the media with statements on the closeness of the extended family literally produced by the man whose name (and genes) he carries, and on his dilemma in meeting the opposing demands of being a member of the family on one hand and a senator of the realm on the other. But his duly recorded presence at the Las Piñas police station where his half-sister perjured herself on the morning after the murder puts him in an awkward position now that she has flown the coop. He would be wise to maintain his silent stance despite provocation from his father’s mistress, and let the process take its course.

To be sure, the eyewitness account of the murdered young man’s girlfriend—who tragically has to rebuild her life along with her shattered face—would help immensely to clinch the case. The sooner the matter is settled in court, the sooner the unfortunate minor siblings can begin to move on. Let not this murder mean the end of their own lives.