Mouthfuls

JUST ABOUT everybody who’s anybody is out to grab the attention of the Filipino these past few days. Their soberly noble undertones amped in a mouthful of the sublimely ridiculous.
Like deposed, jailed, convicted and pardoned former President Joseph Estrada saying Edsa Dos was a mistake and people were ‘ashamed to celebrate it because they have realized that it was wrong.”
Duh, no matter his vaunted machismo, it would be the height of masochism for Erap to hail EDSA Dos as a liberation of the Filipino people. He being at the losing end of the exercise.
Then, Erap again calling the Macapagal-Arroyo administration “illegitimate.” So, as some wag put it, if that were the case, then Erap’s pardon granted by GMA was a bastardization of the legal process, err, of a presidential prerogative. Ay caramba, hijo de mal gran pu…
Then there was the world-travelling former President Fidel V. Ramos saying to GMA’s very face at the kick-off ceremonies for the 22nd anniversary celebration of EDSA Uno the Libingan ng mga Bayani that the EDSA sins were back.
“It is customary nowadays to denigrate or minimize the importance of the EDSA events – perhaps because the greed, the apathy and the corruption we brought down during those days are once again making themselves felt,” so Ramos declared before an unemotionally stoic GMA.
Ay, how wrong of El Tabako. The EDSA sins are not back. As they have never left the Filipino nation, in the first place.
How soon can he forget President Cory Aquino’s Kamag-anak Inc.
How conveniently has Ramos turned amnesiac with his own PEA-Amari deal, the independent power producers, the billion-peso Expo Filipino scam that forced his successor Erap to mothball the once prime attraction at Clark.
How easily FVR glossed over the cardinal sins of Erap that launched EDSA Dos.
Ramos should take note of what they say of too much travel. With all that crisscrossing of international datelines, with jet lag and cross-cultural immersion, travel addles the brain.
Then there were the prelates who, after counting to a hundred the number of Mass-goers with the once-sainted Cory and the now-messiahnic Lozada pompously beheld “people power.”
My, my, there were thousands more at the pro-GMA rally staged by the Kongreso ng Mamamayan at the Liwasang Bonifacio than those the anti-GMA forces could muster in all their sites combined. And theirs – the latter’s – is “people power?”
Aye, there is yet another bastardization, a hollowing of the once hallowed phrase.
Mouthfuls amounting to nothing. That was all there was in all those loose talks from supposed-to- be voices of erudition.
Ironically, the strongest, the most-telling statement that came out in the past few days was neither vocal nor verbal.
It was that simple walk of the generals down EDSA to their headquarters. Called a march of unity – it displayed where real power resides. It showed that whatever declarations of, nay, pretensions to “people power” of the so-called civil society, the opposition, even the Church, it can never be without the military.
Sovereignty resides in the people, yes. Civilian authority is always supreme over the military, yes again. So who wields that authority? Neither Cory, Fidel nor Erap. Neither the Church nor civil society.
For ill or good, it is still Glory be.