Joke

Conrado de Quiros of the Inquirer is always good and inspiring reading. This one is searingly good.

I’ve always liked and respected Joker Arroyo. It’s not because he is a Bicolano. I don’t particularly like or respect the other Bicolanos who have been thrust into the limelight over the years, except for Raul Roco.

Joker I’ve liked and respected in the same way that I’ve always liked and respected Nene Pimentel. Despite drifting to the “Dark Side” at some point in their lives, they’ve kept a good deal of the “Force” inside them—in the form of defending human rights. That was how they made a name for themselves to begin with, as human rights lawyers. No, more than that, as people whose hearts burned with the libertarian fire.

Imagine, therefore, my profound dismay when I heard Joker last week, defending his decision to join GMA’s ticket. It’s bad enough that he did join it.

He would have been better off running as an independent and preserved whatever patches of believability still clung to his claim of being a maverick. Even if he wins this battle, he will have lost the war. Some defeats are luminous victories, some victories are crushing defeats. One would imagine that our natural trajectory is to commit mistakes in our youth, as we sow our wild oats; and grow wisdom in our age, as our thoughts turn toward bequeathing a good name to our children, if not to justifying our lives to our Maker. Alas, in this country the opposite happens.

It’s bad enough that Joker enlisted in GMA’s cause. It’s worse that he defended it the way he did.

In the past, he said, he’s crossed swords with GMA, particularly when she declared emergency rule, when she supported Cha-cha and when her government got involved in shady deals. But he has had no reason to give up on her. On the contrary, he has had every reason to be bullish about her. “No one can deny that the country is moving forward. The political choice in the coming election is to trip up the country or help it along.” The opposition, he said, has nothing to offer. All it has done is try to impeach GMA. While at that, “one has yet to hear the opposition denounce attempts by military adventurers to topple the government and set up one outside the Constitution.”

How can anyone who has ever been a human rights lawyer possibly be confused about the direction in which this country has moved? It is not forward, it is downward. At the very least, it’s no small irony that a day before Joker said this, his boss had just walked out of a press conference because our reporter, Gil Cabacungan Jr., kept asking her why the effects of her touted economic growth had not reached the hungry. In fact, Gil didn’t just ask a perfectly legitimate question, he asked the only question worth asking. Growth that happens explosively in only one part of the body is not called progress, it is called cancer.

But far more than that, how can anyone who has ever been a human rights lawyer possibly not see the killings? Or, indeed, the mayhem that is happening right in a Bicolano’s own backyard? The deaths caused by the superstorms from the Pacific are nothing compared to the deaths wrought by the evil wind from Malacañang. One has yet to hear the opposition denounce the extra-constitutional plots of adventurous military officers? One has yet to hear Joker denounce the extrajudicial executions by murderous state-sponsored cutthroats. The killings are not just a vicious trespass against human rights and civil liberties, they are an abomination against any decent community, never mind democracy.

And still that is nothing. One has yet to hear the opposition denounce attempts by military adventurers to topple government and set up one outside the Constitution? One has yet to hear Joker denounce the actual act by a presidential aspirant of stealing the vote and setting up a government outside the Constitution. How can anyone, human rights lawyer or not, possibly ignore the “Hello Garci” tape? The fact that it was illegally obtained may only prevent us from using it to jail GMA. It may not prevent us from using it to not hail her as President. The only reason no one, opposition or not, is denouncing any attempt to oust this regime, by coup or by Cory, by military strike or by People Power, is that this regime is a coup regime. One wrought by ballots rather than by bullets, one wrought by Garci rather than by guns. It has been defended by guns ever since, which brings us back to the killings.

It was Joker who rose brilliantly to damn the Erap government in the impeachment trial for having betrayed the public trust. Where is the Joker to damn this regime, brilliantly or sullenly, for never having had it in the first place?

All the opposition has done is to try to impeach GMA? I may not be a fan of the opposition, but if that is all it has done, then we owe it an eternal debt of gratitude—that is all that needs to be done. Not cross swords with GMA over details, but cross her out for having no right to rule. The issue is not performance, it is legitimacy. People who are not elected have no right to rule. People who try to do something about it are not being destructive, they are being constructive. People who fight injustice are not pulling the country downward, they are pushing the country forward.

If Cory had been “negativistic” when she heroically fought to bring Marcos down, Edsa would never have happened, and Joker would never have been executive secretary. If Joker had been “negativistic” when he fought heroically to bring Erap down, then Edsa II would not have happened, and Joker would never have ended up a GMA minion. Ah, but how soon people forget who they are and what they did.

The political choice in this election is to be a principled alternative or to be a huge joke. The latter brings tears to the eyes, and not from merriment.