BY ROMMEL YNION
A YOUNG republic, barely older than the oldest man still alive today, our country is like a toddler, living each day as if it’s the last day since time sprang to life, learning how to take a singular step at a time from one point to another, loving every breath of life it takes in its journey to God knows where.
Indeed, our country is lost in the woods, symptomatic of a troubled childhood that has no end in sight, groping for morsels of wisdom that can guide it to a future as uncertain as each step it takes into the fog of existential angst, trudging on in spite of its lack of purpose. Aimless. Directionless. Meaningless.
But hate it or love it, it is still our country which, for almost 30 years, we have treated like a toy kingdom where we play with all kinds of toys to our hearts’ content, enjoying them one moment and discarding them the next, tinkering with each of them with alacrity as if our search for meaning can be found within them, and throwing them around like rag dolls as soon as their usefulness outlives them.
Haven’t we noticed how we have toyed with our leaders since Marcos flew to Hawaii? No different from how angst-ridden scientists behave in anachronistic laboratories, actually. For since then, year in and year out, we subsisted on an alphabet soup of trials and errors, slurping it deliriously especially when it tastes just exactly the way we wanted it, and regurgitating it as soon as our taste buds crave for something else.
Ah, the game of the antitheses. We didn’t like the dictator, right? No problem, we could always opt for his complete opposite epitomized at that time by the housewife of our fallen hero. She was no doubt everything that Marcos was not. We loved her, thinking at that point in our evolution that she was the panacea for all our ills. The embodiment of our dreams, to say the least.
But true to form, we, children of this young republic, played with Cory like we do in a play room. She was, indeed, a novelty to all of us then. Sick and tired of the strongman who made us cry, we enjoyed coddling this cute little rag doll which rekindled our dream for our nation: To live the life we wanted without the interference of the state.
And lo and behold, when the country plunged into darkness, both literally and figuratively, because Cory proved to be an incompetent manager, we didn’t like her anymore. Matter-of-factly, we hated her most when she attracted all those six coup attempts that disrupted our lives inside our play room. Gnashing our teeth in frustration, we just waited for another chance to replace her.
Alas, when elections came in 1992, we chose Fidel V. Ramos, the antithesis of Cory Aquino. Yes, he was everything that Cory was not. That little rag doll we discarded for making life miserable for us taught us a lesson not to choose another one like her ever again.
And so, as expected from a West Point graduate who rose to become the most decorated general of our young republic, Ramos put order where there was chaos, light where there was darkness, and prosperity where there was hunger.
For awhile, life was so good that as children, we found so boring. Life became so predictable like a military camp governed by rules and yes, activities all in clockwork regularity. We, children of the young republic, craved for action, unpredictability, and, well, surprises.
Nobody epitomized that list of cravings better than Erap Estrada. No doubt the antithesis of Ramos, Erap gave us what we wanted. And more. For not only did he make our lives full of action, unpredictability and surprises; he also drove us to the brink of the Apocalypse where all we could see was our imminent extinction.
We abhorred him so much that we didn’t want to wait for the election to replace him. And so, we all massed at Edsa until that historic boulevard teemed with our fellowmen obsessed with the singular purpose of booting him out of Malcañang as we couldn’t resist the temptation of putting atop the pedestal another antithesis of the leader who brought us nothing but misfortune.
After persuading Erap to leave Malacañang long before the end of his term, we took in another toy in Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Unlike her predecessor who couldn’t speak English, eternally prone to malapropism, Gloria was the epitome of erudition. She not only spoke English but also Spanish, both languages flowing impeccably from her tongue like she was born with them.
Our new toy, at that time, was a novelty. She was petite but strong. Vulnerable but, in a way, impregnable, she embodied the paradox of our existence, mesmerizing us no end, titillating our sense like no other leader did before or since she rose to the top of the political totem pole. We loved her not because she was really the best, but simply because to us, at that time, she was a respite from the vagaries of Erap’s suffocating rule.
But, alas, just like any other toy in our toy kingdom, her usefulness was ephemeral. Later, swamped with issues of corruption, she struck sensitive chords in us, rekindling memories of our traumatic lives under Marcos, Cory and Erap, driving us once again to long for her antithesis.
Salivating over our chance to grab a new toy which, we thought, had to be the complete opposite of Gloria Arroyo, we elected into the presidency Cory’s son, Noynoy Aquino, in 2010. Indeed, Noynoy was everything that Gloria was not. His image was squeaky clean, his integrity unquestioned, his political pedigree unequalled.
True to form, we, the children of this young republic, frolicked with our new toy for four years, enjoying even his idiosyncrasies, savoring every moment of travelling on his daang matuwid, and dreaming big dreams with him as we seemed to be on the road to a destiny never before dreamed possible by our minds numbed by disillusionment over the years.
But just like everything in our toy kingdom, Noynoy’s value was evanescent. He, too, met the same tragic fate in our eyes. His presidency, now plunging into the abyss of irreversible tragedy, has become an eyesore that we urgently need to cast off into the sea of history. To us, he is a goner. Our confidence in him gone sour, we now have started doing what we do best: Looking for a replacement.
Our pattern is clear: We always look for the antithesis of the leader we want to replace. And based on the unmistakable pattern of our behavior under similar circumstances in the past, we will grab a toy that is the complete opposite of the previous one in our possession.
Now, who is the toy that is destined to catch our fancy at this time? Who embodies now everything that Noynoy is not? No doubt the search has begun as the future beckons with a new political order as matter of necessity.
History has shown that we have the capacity to find whoever that toy will be. The question that only remains: How long are we going to play in this toy kingdom until our young republic, undermined by our playfulness, bursts asunder?/PN
