Lenten acts

FEW can equal the Philippine theater of the absurd.

In Sun.Star Cebu’s page 1 story yesterday, Oscar C. Pineda and Isolde D. Amante reported the contrasting styles of two mayors reacting to their suspension over the Asean Summit street lamp purchases.

While Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza quietly surrendered his seat after kissing goodbye his vice-mayor and political rival, Mandaue City Mayor Thadeo Ouano sought a temporary restraining order, and set up a blockade of supporters and heavy equipment at City Hall.

The spectacle alone in Mandaue should merit another mention in wikipedia, google and other sites on the Internet.

Under the entry on “ochlocracy,” the Edsa Revolution is already cited as a historical example of the use of a mass of people to “intimidate constitutional authorities.”

Mob rule or “government by mob” challenges the rule of law. The Mar. 31 Sun.Star report described the “irate crowd” in Mandaue as protesting “the ‘vigilante justice’ dispensed by the anti-graft office.”

Many in the crowd “stayed up late the previous night for a vigil.” Yellow armbands were spotted. The supporters also stayed “under large white tents marked with their mayor’s name.”

In contrast, Radaza’s supporters wore red armbands. They were assembled in the lobby but “stood quietly… while the suspension order was served.”

While Teddy’s politician-son and Teddy’s politician-father came out later to thank their supporters, Radaza went around shaking hands with co-employees and constituents before doing the same with his vice-mayor and her running mate. The crowd cheered when he “suddenly” kissed his rival on the cheek.

Two mayors, two contrasting styles, the same lack of shame.

If it was melodrama for Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu had comedy as the main act.

True statesmen would have spared Cebuanos the orchestrated absurdity.

Living in this country for 41 years has a way of lowering expectations. To stay sane and not break out into epileptic fits of desiring greener foreign shores, I’ve taught myself to expect nothing of politicians.

But the P150-million deal on the overpriced summit lampposts is not exactly nothing.

Driving twice a day, six days a week, past the Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu and Cebu lampposts, it strikes me as surreal that: a) the government was charged P224,000 for each lamppost while a similar one installed in Naga within the same period cost only P16,000; b) the involved officials have not taken a leave of office so as not to prejudice or obstruct the investigation; and c) Cebuanos like me can drive past the lampposts daily as we don’t find a) and b) absurd at all.

Until last Friday’s tribute to Laurel and Hardy, the comic and tragic duo of silent films.

According to wikipedia, Polybius in his Histories wrote that okhlokratia demonstrates how the kratos (rule, power, strength) of okhlos (mob) can turn pathological (mob rule) and be subverted from the good (democracy).

Polybius should have met the local Laurel and Hardy. In the Philippines, it’s not the mob but its handler that matters.

The synchronized colors of the supporters’ shirts, armbands and tents, as well as their collective reactions (“irate” in Mandaue, “quiet” in Lapu-Lapu) told a story that veered from the official performances.

All that was missing perhaps was the discarded remnants of packed lunches.

I hand it though to Radaza, master at mime, for deciding, right after he relinquished responsibility to his rival, that he might as well start campaigning.

Encore for political penitence.

mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 0917-3226131


* Published in Sun.Star Cebu’s Apr. 1, 2007 issue

Anak ng Porn (Child of Porn)

WHAT was I doing? One afternoon, just before fetching my boys from school, I checked in a seedy motel room with three men, only one of whom I sort of knew.

Dear Xerex, ano ba itong nagawa ko? Waiting for your advice, Breathless

This was not too far from what actually happened. When Reggae nga Bisaya (RnB) standard bearer-turned-celebrity Budoy wept on national TV because he was moved by the plight of artists “like Roylu” not getting the exposure they deserved, I was shocked.

I had never seen Budoy cry. I wondered, too, if Roylu had abandoned his art, as unconventional as his spelling since our UP days.

Weighed down by this anxiety, I dropped by Gamayng Galeri at the Turtle’s Nest Book Café in Lahug. To my bottomless relief, I found my friend as decrepit and as independent as ever, not by any indicator churning out art fit to accessorize any living room of fine living and good taste.

Roylu had converted the small, windowless space that is Gamayng Galeri into the one-room “Philippine National Motel.”

During the afternoon of my visit, the machine would not at first play the disc showing excerpts of “Sex in Philippine Cinema.” While Roylu huddled about repairs with two teenagers who walked in from the street, I explored the dimensions of the Philippine National Motel.

A signboard and a bed that did not smell of sweat made this room a notch better than the hovels of Mahayahay and other inner cities, where the poor pay P5 to sniff shabu before getting laid (or the other way around, I forget now which is the more frequent).

At the foot of the bed were three left slippers and one right, with heels worn out clearly on the rubber. Roylu said that in places where the habitués were as rundown as the premises, folks left behind the pair they walked in with if they chanced upon a better pair in the room.

Perhaps as a Valentine’s Day special (one of the motel holidays where occupancy is high), the Philippine National Motel had two red satin pillows, a bedside lamp that gave off a reddish glow, and a vending machine dispensing condoms in red foil.

Shaped like a ballot box, the rubber dispenser contained scraps of newspaper. I tried to find out the papers’ identity by peering into the keyhole, which took the place of the slit for inserting the “ballots,” but the shadows in the room were not conducive for that kind of voyeurism.

Then the teenage repair boys came back, and the machine showed what must be the oddest “chop-chop” porn: excerpts of Filipino sex-trip movies accompanied by a soundtrack extracted from a phone conversation said to have taken place between a former election official and this country’s president.

According to Roylu, installation has one advantage over other forms of visual art: the spectator ceases to just “view art” when he or she interacts with the space, transforming art from being an object into an experience, personal and thus more intense.

For Roylu, the Philippine National Motel shows how pornography is so much like politics, “partaking of each other but leaving one feeling hollow.”

Unlike Roylu though, I think pornography has just a little more redeeming value than politics. “Dear Xerex” began as a “sex advice” column in a tabloid.

The ones behind the DVD series, now on its sixth or seventh volume, cut out the advice and focused on what sold well on the streets. Watching those spliced images and trying to ignore the background sound in the one-room Philippine National Motel, I belatedly realized how ingeniously we cover our faces with meanness to hide the obscenity already in our system.

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com or 09173226131)