somewhere i have never traveled. . .: March 2007

Time is the widest ocean.

Here, standing on the shore
where I find myself stranded,
carried by waves and drifting on currents,
gazing now across the violent waters
to a past I can now almost barely see,
but only long for,
I look towards the distance:
to where we had been,
the distance we had traveled,
to what we had done to bring us where we are.

It is a nostalgia
for a place no longer there.

But time is like your leaving, too, my dear,
to the other side of world,
where shores are no strangers
to muted partings and
physical distances do not apply.

For though you may be where you are,
And I may be where I am,
We are separated by more than this ocean.

Between us and time, there is no returning.
Nor is there safe harbor to welcome me home.

I am not one to trumpet my politics in public. In my mind, politics is like religion and faith: it’s often best a matter kept between God and yourself. But today, however, I will make an exception.

Last Christmas, I got to see one of my father’s cousins who was a surgeon who lived in Missouri, in the United States. I knew that he had just relocated his family back to the Philippines, where he wanted his two daughters to study and grow up. What I did not know was that he planned to run for the Philippine Senate.

He name is Dr. Martin D. Bautista.

In the last couple of days, our newspapers have been filled with articles on campaigns being mounted by candidates of every color and persuasion. Most of you will agree, however, that most of these candidates are the same ones who have brought this country to the sorry place it is now. I think they’ve had their chance. Only problem is, would there be anybody else?

To be honest, I do not know if my uncle will make a good senator. But if only for his good intentions, and his lack of political agendas, I think Dr. Bautista deserves our vote. He could be one of those “elses” our country desperately needs.

Consider the following article by Conrado de Quiros:

THERE’S THE RUB: Courage
By Conrado de Quiros, Inquirer
Last updated 00:47am (Mla time) 02/21/2007

AT about the same time that Team Unity opened its campaign in Cebu City last weekend, to much fanfare and confetti, several relative unknowns were going quietly about their business, apprising anyone interested enough to listen about their senatorial bids. Such a one was Martin Bautista, who shook hands with fellow shoppers at the Greenhills tiangge [flea market] and told them that he was running for the Senate. He is one of three doing so under the banner of Kapatiran, the anti-trapo [traditional politics] party, and if by some miracle he does make it, he says, he plans to abolish the pork barrel, uplift the lot of the poor and bring back decency to government.

The knee-jerk reaction to something like this is to be polite and say aloud, “Ah, yes, that is a very good idea,” but to think privately, “What a bunch of losers.” On the face of it, and compared to the lineups of Team Unity, GO and the various mestizo [mixed-affiliation] coalitions, Bautista and company seem no better or worse than the nuisance candidates the Comelec routinely weeds out of the garden before they can threaten to sprout. Candidates who either have batty agendas or have no chance of winning. Though as I’ve written before, in this topsy-turvy Alice-in-Wonderland country the batty agendas of the “nuisance” candidates are often worlds saner than the presumably rational ones of the “serious” candidates. I mean, who is more believable, an unemployed man who says he will spread love, peace and music to this land or a Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo minion who says he will bring justice, truth and freedom?

But to see people like Bautista as “losers” is precisely the kind of knee-jerk reaction that has wrecked the knees of this country and reduced it to a cripple groping blindly in the dark. Look at Bautista and company’s credentials and see if the wannabes in the administration and opposition tickets, individually or collectively, can hold up a candle to them. Bautista is a doctor who has worked in New York and Oklahoma for the last 17 years, who never applied for a green card, and who left a job most Filipino doctors can only dream about (they don’t even mind turning into nurses). “Life is short,” he says. “Better spend it doing something good for your country.”

His two other confreres in Kapatiran have equally sterling credentials. Adrian Sison is one of the country’s top lawyers. And Zozimo Paredes was the executive director of the presidential commission monitoring the implementation of the Philippine-US Visiting Forces Agreement who resigned his post in disgust over the Malacañang-sanctioned springing of Daniel Smith from the Makati City jail. How many of our candidates today have shown that kind of malasakit, or compassion, for the country?

I grant that the burden does not completely lie with the voters. People who present themselves to the voters have the obligation to do so in as pleasing a way as possible, short of resorting to singing and dancing, notably to tunes that reduce this exceptionally musically gifted country to the status of a retardate. They have the obligation as well to shout their heads off and be heard, to try and raise the money to advertise themselves, short of stealing or selling their souls to the devil or Fortress Trapo, whichever is worse, and not just sit back and trust in the intelligence of the Filipino voter. It’s good to trust in God, if you are a believer, but as we all know, God helps those who help themselves. That is true as well of the god of elections, who is the Filipino voter. (Of course, Arroyo has been known to mistake Garci for the voter as the god of elections, but that is another story.)

But the even bigger burden of responsibility lies with us, the public. To this day, I find truly reprehensible that concept of “winnability.” At the very least, it brings out the worst in us, driving us to vote for a candidate just because others are doing so, in the same way that lemmings throw themselves off a cliff just because others are doing so. At the very most, it robs us of a power we hold in our hands. That power is the vote. What makes a candidate “winnable” is not something he possesses, it is something we do. We vote for a candidate, he wins. We do not vote for him, he loses. It’s as simple as that. At least barring God or Garci.

Over the last couple of decades, I’ve supported candidates who I’ve thought were good for the country. Few of them won. Certainly neither of the presidential candidates I supported did: Jovito Salonga in 1992 and Raul Roco in 1998 and 2004. I’ve never regretted it. I’ve never felt I lost because of it. On the contrary, I’ve always thought it was the people who voted for the “winnable” candidate that lost, and lost big. Look at where the country is now.

In this country, the greatest courage is not shown in the face of the direst danger, it is shown in the face of the slightest ridicule. I’ve seen people risk their lives to fight tyranny but balk at endorsing “marginal” candidates, or candidates who are principled but “unwinnable,” for fear of becoming an object of scorn or laughter. Or for fear of being called naïve or simpleminded. What, it’s sophisticated to vote for an entertainer turned ersatz politician because he or she is popular? It’s brilliant to deliver this country into the hands of wheeler-dealers and/or downright crooks because they smell of money? Scorn away and laugh away, but I personally feel that when I endorse people like Martin Bautista, I win. And the country wins with me.

I wish I could say that he who laughs last laughs loudest. But I don’t know that the “unwinnable” candidates will win now, or ever. One thing I do know with absolute certainty and which applies to those who will vote for the “winnable” trapo and entertainer this May:

He who laughs first weeps longest.