The Emperor's New Clothes

By now, most middle-class Filipinos would have read, digested, or even thoroughly enjoyed Professor Randy David’s lucid, astute, and remarkably prescient commentary on the national situation. In his speech, which he delivered at the Manila Polo Club, Professor David insists that “THE CRUX OF THE PRESENT CRISIS consists in the fact that the institutions in the political and the legal systems of our society have failed to arrive at a reasonable closure of the issues thrust upon them.”

True, true, all too damnably true. Despite the fact that we, as recently as several decades ago, have gone through soul-wrenching political crises that test our fidelity to some democratic ideal, or at least some fidelity to a political process that seeks to ensure our people’s right to stumble and meander towards a community rooted in mutual respect, openness, understanding, friendship, and joy, we seem to have learned nothing about our responsibilities in continually advancing the cause of our freedoms. Instead, we dither about and blabber on, hoping that someone, somewhere, would have the courage to do exactly what the little boy did in the fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”: to point out that despite all her claims to the contrary, Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, wears no clothes. Even more galling however than our refusal to positively identify the Arroyo Administration as a potentially illegitimately wrought political body, is the fact that we allowed her to get away with a perversion commonly found in dictators, despots, and even emperors, which is to insist, like Neil Gaiman’s Morpheus that “It is the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit and the emperor remains an emperor.”

I am not entirely sure whether one, realistically speaking, can conclusively prove that President Arroyo does not enjoy a constitutional mandate to rule. However, I am entirely convinced, given her utter disregard for our political institutions, that she genuinely believes that the power she currently enjoys legitimizes her own self, and the suspiciously chimerical administration she heads.

One could argue that her hubris does not, and should not, bar her from holding office. Even one of her staunchest critic, Conrado de Quiros, once wrote that in the original conception of the polis, a solon was conceived of as one who legislates, not one who moralizes. And yet, one could extend the argument regarding the lack of morality in our lawmakers and leaders in the same way that we consider the utility of Art. Mortimer Adler argues that Art is useless for anything, save for making life worth living. It is possible to conceive of a world without art, but who would want to live in it?

G.K. Chesterton once wrote “Art, like morality, consists of drawing a line somewhere.” With all due respect to great leaders who excelled in providing a clear moral mandate to their peoples despite the lack of morals thereof in their character, we have to draw the line with GMA. Even in my naivety, I never expected the president to be a paragon of virtue. But I don’t think that I set out to purposely choose to be guided by a president who seems to be the very anti-thesis of virtue, whether political, moral or aesthetic. (On a side note, does Rajo Laurel really design her outfits? Then perhaps Rajo is conducting his own quiet anti-Arroyo campaign, as she looks positively dismal. Ate Glo dresses better than GMA. Some fashionistas would opine that it might not be possible to charge GMA with crimes against the democratic ideal, but that one could certainly convict her of crimes against fashion and good taste.)

As we struggle to author a civilized response to this monster of a president, whether through mass action, a quiet rehabilitation of our flawed socio-political systems, or to insist on new elections, it is good to remember that the last thing we should do in this situation is to lose hope. As Professor David said in the same speech quoted above:

“What is to be done or how we should respond to the crisis is a function of how we look at the situation. The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) explains the crisis as the result of the erosion of our moral values. The bishops are calling for a renewal of our public life. This is a long-term process, and one can understand why our religious leaders have couched the problem in specifically moral terms, even as they are conscious of not overstepping the bounds of their authority. The bishops insist that the solution can come from the relentless pursuit of the truth by the community as a whole.

My own view is quite different from that of the bishops. Like them, I believe that our public values have changed. But, unlike them, I believe that they have changed not necessarily for the worse. On the contrary, I believe that the crisis in our political life arises precisely from the growing refusal of many ordinary Filipinos from all classes to tolerate patronage, fraud, political bossism, corruption, and misgovernance of our public life.”

You have to hand it to our president. No one else, with the notable exception of perhaps Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, or Jean Paul Duvalier, could be so abhorrently ghastly to so many different kinds of people in almost exactly the same way. ANC reporter Ces Orena Drilon revealed that Philippine Military Intelligence uncovered an oust-Arroyo plot that united both the Magdalo group of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the rebel New People’s Army. The sole saving grace of her administration is that she has united us in wanting her out, and spurred us to conceive of something, or someone, better.