Death wish

YOU WERE there. In your heart of hearts, did you really believe your compadre’s life was in imminent danger when those truckers and Balas boys stormed the capitol?
My seminary elder Don Luisito asked over our usual espressos at La Nilad in SM City Pampanga.
No. His physical being was never in danger. Not even remotely.
What if the protesters managed to break through the doors to his office?
Not even then.
You, sure? The protesters were angry and agitated. They were ranting and raging since early morning. Why, the Balas boys even heckled the governor as he spoke of his accomplishments earlier during the flag-raising ceremonies.
Even if they raved, there was no way that they could have harmed him.
How can you be so sure?
There were no less than seven mediapersons – myself included – and three television cameras, from Infomax, ABS-CBN and CLTV 36, with the governor in his office at the height of the siege. Only the criminally insane would dare commit murder and mayhem in front of the media. From their looks, the protesters, both truckers and Balas boys did not fit the molds of Mad Dog Kelly or Jack the Ripper.
So, why do you suppose he kept on harping in his statements after the siege that his life and that of his – how do you say it, putative? – provincial administrator were in danger?
Lots of speculations there. Any guesses?
Okay, he could be overdramatizing the event, a pa-martyr effect, an argumentum ad misericordiam to gain, rather, regain the sympathy of the people. You yourself were taken by this.
Me? How?
So did you not become kinder to your compadre? You even wrote how you so assured him that you would stand by his side during the siege. Next thing you’d write would be you were prepared to die by his side then, ha, ha,ha.
Ha, ha, ha, funny. Anything more stupid from you?
Still on the dramatic mode. The governor exaggerated the life-threatening fiction to strengthen his case against Col. Singian. He found it auguring well for his open distrust of, no, make that hostility toward Singian and the whole Pampanga police practically. His hype made the police look all the more convincingly inept and incompetent, as he himself scripted. Don’t you agree?
Probably so. I am just intrigued with your use of the word “scripted.”
What of it?
I don’t know but the word broke loose a tsunami of sounds and images of my compadre in my mind.
Spill them out before you get drowned.
Ha, ha, funny. Anyways, there is the image of the gubernatorial candidate Among Ed in his blue bullet-proof vest telling the electorate he was ready to die for them in his advocacy for good governance. A comic scene there, really. Then, the reported foiled assassination attempt on Gov. Panlilio early in his term courtesy of a half-deranged man who, as he stood next to the governor, opened his belt bag to get a cigarette but in so doing dropped a pen knife. Another farcical act. Then, Panlilio himself adding one more R to the three he said were meant to take him out of the governorship…
Reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic?
You’re really funny, Don Luisito. That’s for Recount, Resign, Recall. And, with my compadre’s patented pa-effect, Requiem.
Now I am convinced your compadre, contrary to accusations has no Messiahnic complex. What he has is more of an obsession for martyrdom, a death wish, in the service of his flock. There’s the script.
Maybe. So next time I see him, I’d tell him be careful with what he wishes for, it may just be granted. And all scripts, incidentally, also come to The End.
Morbid.