Interview with a phantom
By Noralyn Mustafa
Inquirer News Service

IT was one of those times that brought on again that kind of feeling where you often caught yourself wondering whether this was real or unreal, or whether this was simply because your world as you knew it had been turned upside down by forces beyond your control.

I was still grappling to come to terms with the State of the Nation Address Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo delivered last month (which turned out to be the most vulgar display of political obscenity I have ever seen in my lifetime), when she giggled on television that she was the one cheated in the last elections and then blamed us for creating a rotten system that made her a "victim."

Change the system, change the structure, she said, echoing, four decades late, the early batches of military officers and an elite selection of bureaucrats who invented the term "technocrat," and whom Marcos sent to the Asian Institute of Management and the Development Academy of the Philippines to be transformed into messiahs of the gospel
of "management of change" -- the messiahs who would kill the "old society" and resurrect it into the "new."

(Those whose ideas about changing the world differed from those of Marcos' were killed, but they were never resurrected.)

This she told a group of infants who, she said, would be fed and nurtured to ensure that their generation would be brighter than hers; so they could create a political system that would not be as rotten as hers; assuming, of course, that they would have enough to eat to survive that long.

Even then, those babies were still lucky because they and their unsuspecting mothers got to have precious photographs to show generations of relatives, neighbors and friends of that incredible day they were actually allowed inside the Palace; even as others, some years older than the babies, were dying a slow death breaking their backs carrying sacks of rice in the port of Cebu, cutting sugarcane in Negros, and burning themselves dry under the sun in a quarry in Romblon.

But I guess what really triggered the topic of this piece was seeing the members of the foreign press, some of them friends of mine, being sent out of the room where Ms Arroyo would face the media in a press conference, emceed by Ignacio Bunye, wearing as usual, the excruciatingly inscrutable face of one who must have been an android in his immediate past life.

It was that time again when, in desperation, I had to seek refuge in my most inexpensive coping mechanism: sleep, perchance to dream "dreams no mortal dared to dream before," and maybe, if only in my dreams, "with Fate conspire to change this sorry scheme of things entire."

And so in deep sleep I dreamt I was "Madam President" being interviewed by a lone interviewer who looked like Korina Sanchez but who introduced herself to me as "Your Worst Media Nightmare." But the worst part of it was, I could not answer any of her questions because my tongue was paralyzed with fear at the sight of a horrible phantom looming behind Korina. The phantom kept changing its face in rapid succession -- from that of Bunye to Rigoberto Tiglao, to Eduardo Ermita, to Gabriel Claudio, to Ricardo Saludo, to Angelo Reyes, to Raul Gonzalez, to Fidel Ramos, to Jose de Venecia, then back to Bunye to start another cycle of those faces and another and another -- all of which scowled at me, I noted, with eyebrows that turned into half-moons. I couldn't quite comprehend why, each time Korina asked a question, this phantom, whatever face he was wearing at a particular moment, would make, with his hands, one of two signs: zipping his mouth or cutting his throat.

I woke up in cold sweat.

As I sat in the living room, slipping into a catatonic state "while I pondered weak and weary," trying to fathom the significance of my nightmare, Mike the Defender came on the television screen before me, giving the greatest performance of his life, trying to convince the media that "it is the voice of the President (on the Garci tapes) but it is not the President talking."

It was, I swear, delivered with the same level of irony achieved by Marlon Brando as Mark Anthony in his oration, telling the Roman masa about the treachery of the members of the senate, yet asserting at the end of every bitter disclosure, "and they are all honorable men."

I am at a loss for words. Due to a limited vocabulary, I cannot seem to describe, even in my silent but very weary mind, my reaction to this, except to recognize what appears to be some kind of irrelevance rising from the depths of my murky thoughts: Defensor has just been removed from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to head an agency especially created for him, the Department for the Defense (of Ms Arroyo), resulting in a bureaucratic crisis because there is nobody who can replace Mike on the expressway, where he chases, before cameras, trucks of illegal logs.

And then it happened.

It was a moment as magical as can be possible in these times. Philippine media have been vindicated, the humiliation of Focap has been assuaged. I have never been prouder to be part of this noblest of professions.

It was one shining moment in Philippine journalism that will inspire us all in our constant struggle in treading the difficult path between the truth and the greatest hoax that has been played on the Filipino people.

No, this country, this nation will not perish, not even under the most relentless assault of lies and deception the phantom can conceive.

The biggest nail on the coffin of this fraudulent administration was driven right after the day the casket containing the body of the President I voted for was embraced by the earth that had sustained him in life. And he was an honorable man.

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