What a tangled web!
By Noralyn Mustafa

OH, what a terrible web they wove when they endeavored to explain the 6.2 million pesos allegedly paid to Nora Aunor.

With the suddenness the purloined check broke into the news, all of Da Queen's men were caught absolutely clueless. Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman had to do some quick damage control with a hastily assembled press conference, the first ever in the history of Philippine journalism called for the purpose of displaying a check.

But I could neither tell where the commas and periods fell nor how many zeros adorned the figures 6 and 2, distracted as I was by the glitter of the heavy gold necklace she wore and the sparkle of the crystals that dangled from her ears.

I don't know how much more we can take of this sorry scheme of things. And though I really hate to say this -- famous already as we are for our propensity for self-flagellation -- I must say we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Because from the moment Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo swore, on the day sanctified by the execution of Jose Rizal, that she was not going to run for the presidency and we believed her, we made ourselves accomplices in institutionalizing duplicity in our government, which finds so apt a metaphor in the "Gloria Look-alike" contest that mercifully ended just as I was writing this.

The day after she made that vow, she began her campaign and the hoax was on, and we didn't know what hit us until that day in October last year when she announced that she was running after all. With the accidental power we handed her as we giddily danced to RJ Jacinto's "Grey and White" albums, she set in motion the weaving of a web the likes of which we have not seen since Marcos.

From then on the line between campaigning and governance became blurred. And as wrongdoing surfaced almost daily in the media, the web of lies got even larger, ensnaring all. There was nothing we could do about it because it was "governance," and any objection to patently corrupt capers would be shot down as obstructionism, or worse, betrayal of the poor for whom the heart of this administration was hemorrhaging.

But one image of the poor, frozen in a newspaper photo that is filed in my mind, comes to haunt. It is that of a group of grim-faced deportees, mostly women and children just arrived aboard a naval LST. Nothing wrong with that except for the sight of Soliman in the midst of them, her wide smile a jarring, disturbing contrast in the funereal tableau. And the news story told us why: it was afternoon, lunch had been withheld until the arrival of GMA for photo-ops.

The poor have been truly held hostage by this administration; worse, they are being used in the most obscene way. Anybody who questions the raid on the Pagcor funds is held at bay by the self-righteous revelation that the money was used to provide "access to clean water for the urban poor." You object to Gloria's Patubig sa Barangay Program, heaven help you because you will reap the wrath of the urban poor. And so on.

But not all the water of the Patubig can wash the blood off the hands of Lady Macbeth in this deed most foul.

There is, for example, the almost full-page print ad of the group that calls itself "Pro-Gloria" in the May 4 issue of the Inquirer, saying that "yes, President Gloria has been using government funds... to help the poor," listing six programs and projects to prove it.

These are the Kalsada Natin, Aalagaan Natin (Kanan) that claims to have employed 300,000 people with "total wages paid amounting to more than 1.4 billion pesos," the PhilHealth program that provides "free health care for the indigents," at a cost of "about three billion pesos," the student assistance fund for a strong republic (SAFFASR) with an allocation of 500 million pesos.

To entice government workers, there is the GSIS summer-one-month-salary (SOS) loan program for which a total of 8.5 billion pesos has been released; the Patubig and the hybrid rice called "Gloria Rice" which in less image-obsessed climes would have been named after the scientist who developed the strain.

These are all very well. But then truth, like Edgar Allan Poe's tell-tale heart, has a way of beating through the best-laid alibis.

Because anybody who can read will see in the ad itself that most of these wonderful things magically happened only last month, except for Kanan which materialized last October when the President launched her candidacy.

"Downpayment lang ito," she kept repeating early in her campaign, threatening to pay the rest of the "installments" should she win.

And to add the supreme insult to this most grave injury, she command us, in her most imperious tone, not only to accept all these, but more than that, to reward her with a "clear majority" mandate, because she is our "last best hope." Good grief.

Are we truly an accursed people? Is this the whirlwind we are reaping for removing a legitimate president for sins that pale beside these venalities?

I thought I had long grown up into the age of not believing. Now I have returned to the age of innocence and once more believe in miracles because I must.

"Walang himala," said Nora Aunor as Elsa in her famous movie. The miracle is with us. Our vote is our last best hope to emancipate ourselves from this web of duplicity.

I had prayed that Brother Eddie, being younger, would be Raul's Joshua because only he can save us from a false God. But that is not to be. Today, I will go out and vote for Raul Roco.

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