The anatomy of fear

The anatomy of fear Both fear and fury on the part of our besieged Vice President were on public display in recent days. For the loyal, meek, and subservient, such as her spokesperson-attorney, there was the old fire and fury; for the public, there were expressions of fear: within the span of 39 days, she went from crowing to loyalists in The Hague about the competence and integrity of our courts to announcing she had no trust in the courts. The difference, of course, is a pending warrant of arrest. In a manner that resembles the treatment of her father, it seems the powers-that-be have taken their measure of the power of the Veep and found it wanting. Whether they intended it or not, tinkering with time-tested standards for impeachment—it was meant to be an extremely difficult instrument of last resort to remove obviously unfit officials—created a mechanism to operationalize buyer’s remorse. Impeachment would, under our present charter, be a more readily available means both to demonstrate how checks and balances (regardless of failure or success, the rituals and drama of impeachment itself served as a means to demonstrate accountability) work, and to fire officials who are beyond redemption. As has been the case with so many things about our Fifth Republic, how it all played out also had other, unintended, consequences. Accountability can easily be misconstrued—or deliberately maligned—as vendetta. The arrest of former President Joseph Ejercito Estrada was historic not because it was an attempt to exact accountability, but because it broke an unspoken agreement in the political class going back generations that once someone was beaten, you didn’t kick them when they were down. Stoked by a parade of irresponsible demagogues such as then Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, amplified by the communications network of the Iglesia ni Cristo, and turned into rage by the mocking text brigades of the new government, what followed was an urban insurrection that nearly succeeded. The sight of that furious crowd engulfing the Edsa Shrine night after night, and the breakaway groups that marched on the Palace, has haunted our political, business, and middle classes ever since. And it marked the start of the demise of people power as it had emerged from 1983 to 1986. Big business and the middle class became gun-shy; civil society and the Church fractured over the aftermath of Edsa Dos; the military, in time, turned its back on adventurism as it professionalized and started to focus on external defense. Yet people power remained something to fear; I remember former Sen. Serge Osmeña, as hard-nosed an analyst of politics as anyone could be, reminding me early on that much of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s behavior could be explained as his being terrified of the possibility of ending up chased out of the Palace. And so, the exercise of national office was premised on cultivating fear, with mastery of mass media as the delivery system. So it was that I’ve never forgotten the morning after his election, when trucks with bullhorns broadcasting messages of intimidation were matched by sirens proclaiming the return of the curfew. Together with this policy of fear was the proclamation of the end of people power as something corrupt and obsolete; henceforth, through the exercise of electoral might, the new president would mightily wield the powers of his office: no need for rallies, or intermediaries or interlocutors like bishops or schools or civil society. It was so successful that efforts to mobilize support became pitiful exercises and, on the whole, have remained so. Never forget it is the Iglesia ni Cristo that mobilized for the Dutertes and rolled up its banners when it, and not the Dutertes, decided the objectives of their mobilization had been met. This is not to say woe unto anyone, private citizen, blogger, or something else, who, alone and unprotected, might fall into the hands of an angry mob. But it is to say that somewhere, somehow, the feeling of inevitable punishment—of serious, even lethal, consequences—were one to defy either the Great Eagle Father or his daughter, is passing. We have learned that once in power, they are to be feared; but that they have lost power in the past and can lose it again; more to the point, such power as they possess is by means of the intimidating possibility of electoral victory, but this seems neither as inevitable nor soon to happen as before. However mind-numbingly boring, both trials in The Hague and Pasay are proceeding. Witnesses are providing testimony. The best that can be said of the defense is that they are hired and fired (in The Hague) with impunity and treated the same way (as everyone saw on the news) by their principals. When the only power they have left to show is aimed at the loyal, that is a power that has truly waned. After all, the frame that endures is the Veep and the former Speaker all facing the same kinds of procedures, and it makes little difference if you can slap your attorney standing or lie feebly in a hospital suite. —————- Email: mlquezon3@gmail.com; Twitter: @mlq3