It's not Dabu, bobo

“SHE IS intelligent, incorruptible and hardworking, but it was not enough to foster love and cooperation at the capitol.”
So what has love got to do with running the capitol?
The striking boys of Balas (Biyaya a Luluguran at Sisikapan), the task force on quarry operation, were way off the mark with their (un)reason for demanding the resignation of putative provincial administrator Atty. Vivian Dabu.
By admitting to her intelligence, incorruptibility and industry, the protestors themselves firmed up Dabu’s stake to her post, causing the very reverse of their intention. The attributes they heaped on Dabu did not make her an undesirable government executive to be run out of office but the ideal one to hold on to, at whatever cost. “Intelligent, incorruptible and hardworking” fellows being rara avis, if not dead dodos, in government.
Fostering love is never included in the defined functions and duties of government officials. So, why demand it from Dabu? As a matter of course too, notwithstanding the governor being a priest, the capitol is no locus of love. Much less a charity ward. Go, ask those alms-seekers driven away from the Office of the Governor.
“Dabu treated us like we were uneducated people. She didn’t respect us at all.” So the Balas plaint went on.
So how should “uneducated” people be treated? There’s a slip there showing. No, not Dabu’s but the Balas boys’.
If, to their mind, Dabu treated them with disdain and disrespect, then that is the treatment they think befits the “uneducated.” Then, that is their way, not necessarily Dabu’s but only impacted on her by them. As we Kapampangans say, pikakasaman ta mu ing sarili ta’ng ugali potang akakit ta iti karing kaparang tau. (We deplore our own habits when we see them in other people.)
The lowly unschooled are to be treated with greater compassion if only to compensate for their lack of education. I don’t know where that sense of altruism came from, leaping out of my memory bank just now.
So Dabu was stern in her treatment of the Balas boys? So? It ain’t Dabu had she cozied up to them and sweet talked them to just laugh off their demotions and dismissals from the task force.
So because of what they perceived and felt as “rudeness” on the part of Dabu, she has become “the bane to the administration of Gov. Eddie Panlilio.”
By that belief – that Dabu is the bane to the Panlilio administration – the Balas boys have made themselves even less than the disdained “uneducated” people they compared themselves to. Our apologies to the uneducated there.
The problem is not Dabu, bobo!
Dabu’s hold on public life and death, as it were, at the capitol is totally dependent on Panlilio. Panlilio, the governor, has the authority. Dabu, the factotum to Panlilio, is a mere instrument of that authority. All official acts of Dabu – some claim even unofficial ones – carry the express imprimatur of Panlilio. The sooner the Balas boys recognize this, the higher their learning curve goes. And with that, the level of their education follows.
In the case at hand, Panlilio himself was reported in his favorite newspaper – Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 14 issue, page 21 – as having “approved the termination and demotion to ensure that the regulatory system was protected from any malfunction and irregularity.”
Clear as day: though it was Dabu that signed and implemented their execution order, it was Panlilio that approved their damnation.
But that the Balas boys cannot see, blinded as they are by their adoration of their Among. No way that the personification of all good and true can ever, ever betray them. No, not their Among. But Dabu very well can, and did.
That severe case of cognitive dissonance afflicts Panlilio’s civil society too. “This is not what the crusade (for good governance and transparency) stood for. This is not about one man but for all the Kapampangans,” the venerable Among Resty Lumanlan was quoted as saying during a Mass he offered with the Balas boys at the capitol.
Some other members of Panlilio’s core group during the campaign were there too – a Bituin of Betis, a Tess of Ateneo, a Laquindanum of Holy Angel U, campaign field marshall Marni, and the crying ex-Balas supervisor named Filologo – taking turns expressing their solidarity with the Balas boys, lamenting their fate, and laying the full blame at Dabu’s door. But not a word was ever spoken of Panlilio’s share of responsibility. Much less his apparent inability to rein in Dabu, when called for.
The civil society there had their sympathy well placed. Their antipathy though was misdirected.
Plainly, dear sirs and madams, the buck stops at Panlilio. It does not end in Dabu. Think otherwise and you’re not only a dodo!