Back on hallowed walls

THE SAGA of the portraits of Pampanga’s governors is finally concluded. They are back to the hallowed hall to where they rightfully belong.
Sometime in the late August 2007, the portraits of the past governors suddenly disappeared from their lofty perches on the second floor lobby of the Capitol.
In a delayed reaction, we wrote in our editorial of November 16, 2007, thus:
No explanations were ever given. Giving rise to a multitude of speculations, as their banishment to parts unknown came after the papering – and peppering – of the walls of the Capitol with photographs of the Reverend Governor Eddie T. Panlilio and his holy warriors.
Yeah, there was Panlilio, unfrocked but more priestly in all poses of prayerful saintliness; his fanatical faithful in the throes of devotional delight upon regaining this plot of Paradise once lost to the forces of evil.
Yeah, the virtual mural celebrates the epiphany – if not the agony and the ecstasy – of Panlilio triumphant.
Not content with the still photographs, a video box at the second floor continuously played and replayed Panlilio in excelsis to the accompaniment of Kapampangan music appropriated by his camp for their exclusive use during the election campaign.
And in what could only be interpreted as adding insult to the injury Panlilio caused the sangguniang panlalawigan, plastered at the very entrance leading to the session hall is a picture of the (un)confirmed provincial administrator, Atty. Vivian Dabu and the equally (un)confirmed provincial legal counsel, Atty. Ma. Elissa Velez lounging on hammocks: an in-your-face do-your-worse-what-do-we-care sneer at the provincial board.
So, what gives?
Is the Panlilio administration doing a tabula rasa -- clearing the slate of col colive remembrance of the Kapampangans of their past political leaders, to imprint and impact Panlilio’s “good governance” into their memory?
Something of a belief that the past – evil as it was – mattered not. Only the present – good as it is – is worth keeping. Some perverse faith put to the extreme by Hitler and his Nazis that sought the extermination of all Jewry, of Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that aspired for the obliteration of China’s pre-communist culture, of Stalin’s rewriting of his own history and that of the Russian revolution, and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge’s extinguishing of Cambodia’s intelligentsia. In their vain, if futile, attempt to perpetuate a memory all their own among their people.
No, Panlilio is too small, too holy yet, to join that unholy league of distinguished, err, infamous tyrants. But by removing Pampanga’s political pantheon, Panlilio can be rightly accused of ordaining his own apotheosis.
And there are not a few people who call themselves civil society who are only too glad, if not too blind, to indulge Panlilio’s every wish.
Eight months later, on July 4, 2008, and the portraits still missing from their place of honor, we wrote here thus:
Reeling from media flak, Panlilio after sometime announced that the portraits of the former governors were taken down for restoration, having been hung too long and exposed to dust and grime.
So where were they taken for restoration? In the ceiling of the Benigno Aquino Hall, for the indulgence of rats, mites and cockroaches.
Utter disrespect of the memory of past leaders is no manifestation of pride in the Kapampangan.
On Tuesday, June 30, 2009 – nearly two years after their disappearance, the portraits – this time of all who served as Pampanga governor, down to Panlilio – are back in renewed splendor.
So all’s well that ends well?
Yeah, right. But what if media did not make a ruckus of the disappearance of those portraits, and later of their being dumped in the ceiling of the Benigno Aquino Hall?
Let’s do our own dumping of our malicious speculations now. Let us just take it from Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao who, during the re-dedication program, thanked Panlilio “for honoring the past governors of the province and putting premium on the importance of service.”
Amen.