Susan, Marcos also stole our dreams
By Antonio Montalvan II
Inquirer News Service

JUDGMENT by comparison seems to be the order of the day for those who want to draw out self-serving meanings from the wake and burial of Fernando Poe Jr. For this reason, there is a predisposition to compare FPJ with Ninoy Aquino. Both men's funerals drew a mammoth crowd of mourners.

How about judgment by contrast? Because the similarities simply do not exist.

Death by martyrdom and death by natural cause are, needless to say, worlds apart. Taking a look at Ninoy in his coffin, one saw a bloodstained, disfigured face contorted in pain. That was definitely not the case with the serene countenance of FPJ in his dapper signature coat and tie. His was hardly the stuff of which revolutions are made. Political adventurism, perhaps, by those who wished to read his death in that manner. I like it the way moviemaker Isah Red put it. With FPJ, the air was abuzz with resentment (against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo). With Ninoy, it was a deeper emotion -- that of passion and rage, he said.

Ninoy's death was politically charged. Dying of cerebral thrombosis in the intensive care unit of a posh Manila hospital that had a reputation for cutting-edge medical technology is hardly the stuff political dramas are made of. Somebody even had the gall to weave a tall tale about FPJ having been poisoned by Ms Arroyo's minions, the kind of poison that sends an enemy into a stroke. What a cheap way of scriptwriting politics into what was clearly a will of God which FPJ's death was.

That FPJ was a good man of boundless generosity for the poor and needy is not hard to see. The number of people coming out to attest to his unknown deeds of charity was nothing short of impressive. FPJ was in a sense a case for the Purple Heart.

But an antithesis to Ms Arroyo he was not. That one is not hard to see, too. A look at the ilk of traditional politicians who went to his wake gave us a disturbing scenario. Imee and Imelda Marcos; Juan Ponce Enrile, the unrepentant martial law henchman; Marcos' bright boy Ernesto Maceda; the Escuderos (who, despite the brilliance of young Chiz, are always on the wrong side of the political fence), not to mention President Estrada, Sen. Loi Estrada, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, San Juan Mayor JV Ejercito, and helicopter-riding Capt. Jude Estrada. Why, even scot-free Laarni was there, and the new horde of turncoats, and hanging-on desperados. So what is new? What is the alternative? The bagong umaga is nothing but a combination of fantasia and hot air.

The Filipino dream is now hitched, literally, to the stars. Thanks to Ms Arroyo who has brought us into this rut, who continues to lethargize us into thinking she's for the poor when in fact she isn't. But we are in for a catastrophe if we allow ourselves to believe that our salvation comes from movie icons who play out the roles of swashbuckling heroes on screen. Real-life heroism-and confronting real-life antagonists-is a serious stuff. It is not for any Tom, Dick and Harry whose only credential is the ability to attract throngs of people for a box-office hit. Remember the Pied Piper? No, it is not on illusion, but only on ideology, where we can hitch the Filipino dream.

I would assume that Niño Muhlach does not have an inkling of this reality. Perched on an elevated platform at the North Cemetery, Muhlach at times experimented on "agit-prop" during what was called "solemn" funeral rites. At one point, the actor compared FPJ's funeral with that of Ninoy's. Perhaps, he was too young in 1983 to make sense of the two million weeping people who brought Ninoy to his grave. He certainly was neither here nor there when Ninoy's funeral march took the whole day to wind through Manila, finally reaching the gravesite at 10 o'clock in the evening. FPJ's funeral failed to surpass Ninoy's, but that was not to be so in Muhlach's cheap political scriptwriting.

Susan's opening salvo on the first day of the wake about stolen dreams being irreplaceable -- implicitly referring to her husband being cheated of his presidential victory -- reveals much about her naiveté and her selective sense of history. Albeit touted by many as her coup de theatre and her feisty introduction to what some would wish to perceive as her foray into politics, the statement holds no water at all. Mr. and Mrs. FPJ were always Marcos supporters. Lest we forget, it was the conjugal dictators themselves who stood as sponsors at their wedding. And since then they never yet had any change of heart, unlike some of their enlightened colleagues in show biz. If truly the masa are in their hearts, well nothing was heard from them when many of the Filipino masa suffered under the dictatorship. And so Karen Davila's pathetic response to Susan's tirade against a television network would have made sense had she remembered that Susan did not say a word against media repression during the Marcos years. Then Karen's tears would have made sense.

Like Marcos before them, and the rest of our national leaders after him, Susan has not metamorphosed into a possible worthy leader. There is in the metamorphosis simply a cat just out of the bag: Susan's politics will still be of the trapo variety. And we know for sure she will not be any different from our present crop of political leaders.
Where were you, Susan, when Marcos stole our dreams?

Comments to monta@cu-cdo.edu.ph