Welcome to bedlam
Chief Justice Reynato Puno believes that there is a need for a “moral force” in the country. He believes himself to be a catalyst, and is calling on “moral leaders” who can be found in “all cross sections of society” to form “a broad coalition” and act as “watchdogs for morality.”
“They will be our moral stewards; they will always remind us that every moral decision has its cost so that we can translate all these standards of morality, or our principles, into definitive actions.” All that is necessary, he says, “is for this moral force to be more manifest, more visible, to be more active in playing its role as the moral ballast against misfeasance and malfeasance in both public and private sectors.”
I have nothing against the honorable justice, and in fact applaud his moves in defense of the press and human rights. And yet I am always wary of people who use the word “moral,” especially as justification for some decision of policy or principle or simple practicality. After all, to demand morality from the public presupposes the possession of some sort of moral ascendancy, a monopoly on morality, and to have that is to justify any and all actions. It wasn’t so long ago when this same moral hero led six other justices to vote for the 2006 People’s Initiative to amend the 1987 Constitution, and moral was the last adjective his newly-minted supporters were calling him.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson says Puno could be the beacon for “the moral forces of the country.” I have always wondered who these moral forces were, and what they were doing when Jovito Palparan was busily raping Bulacan and Nueva Ecija in 2006 and what they were doing at the massacre at Hacienda Luisita.
Perhaps I am wrong in expecting this army to appear like a phalanx of raging angels in defense of life and freedom and human dignity, after all, my conception of right and wrong has very little to do with morality and everything to do with practical necessity and ethical responsibility and the right of the individual to choose. The word “moral” has long been the adjective of choice when it comes to buying integrity. Former Speaker Jose de Venecia called for a “moral revolution” after he was catapulted out of his comfortable speakership in the House of Representatives, called for it after admitting he was with the presidential family in Shenzhen, China during talks about the “immoral” ZTE deal. In 2002 former President Corazon Aquino called thousands into the streets to take a moral stand against an immoral president, then later apologized for being part of his removal from power.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defends the Israel Defense Forces after Palestinian fathers knelt sobbing beside their 2-year-old toddlers in Gaza, the same toddlers who were killed in the righteous massacre led by what Olmert calls “the world’s most moral army.” It is the same morality employed by the neighbors and relatives of Janeth Ponce, who poisoned her three children and herself with a bottle of blue toilet cleaner “because of poverty,” when they said Janeth had no choice. Jun Ducat believed he was a moral man when he held hostage at gunpoint 32 children in a Manila school bus, to demand from government the education of 145 children from the Musmos Daycare. Hitler believed he was protecting the Aryan race, the Church believed it was doing its moral duty by ridding the world of pagans in the crusades, and, according to one Christian gentleman named Ricardo Boncan, this newspaper is heading toward the hellfire of immorality by allowing the publication of this column.
There is, of course, no danger in individual morality. I have learned to be suspicious of people who bandy about the word “morality,” especially in a country so desperate for heroes that a person’s moral integrity can be granted by a well-timed sound bite. Now it is Joker Arroyo, as he thunders against the immorality of a nation run by a thief. Now it is Loren Legarda, as she sheds tears during the failed opening of the second envelope during former President Joseph Estrada’s impeachment trial. Now it is a small, soft-spoken man named Jun Lozada, who has been canonized by church and flock for stepping into the light. Now it is Maj. Ferdinand Marcelino, “the battle-scarred Marine” who announced to the media that he and his team were bribed thrice to let go of the three drug-pushing suspects who will be known now and forever in the popular imagination as “The Alabang Boys,” the same “incorruptible man” whose one proof of being bribed is the fact he claims he was bribed.
Now it is Chief Justice Reynato Puno, defender of free speech, crowned by the moral forces of the country as the new hero in the revolution against immorality. Tomorrow it will be another Legarda, as the crying lady now hawks skin whitener on the same street she walked down in revolt. Tomorrow it will be another Marcelino, another Lozada, another Singson, the momentary heroes in a state where right and wrong depend on the advertising. And so the ride on the pretty carousel, round and round, a new hero on the painted pony going up and down, up and down, so quickly that it is impossible to see that the gilt is chipping and the paint is fading.
Victor Hugo once wrote that everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left. And so it is with the moral nation of the Republic of the Philippines, where you learn to believe in nothing and everything, and the one truth is that anything is possible. The sky is falling, the man has a knife, the neon lights blinking at the street corner over the gay man who came home HIV-positive after being gang raped in Dubai, and now reaps his own justice in Quezon Avenue by offering free sex. And that is the method in the madness. Nothing is certain here, not the state of the nation, not the color of the sky, not even the relative safety of a triple-locked front door.
