3:07 pm
Sunday, 7 December 2008
As I write Manny Pacquiao has just won the historical fight against Golden Boy Oscar de la Hoya (based on GMA-7’s delayed telecast). The Filipino people love boxing for its evocative combination of brawn and brilliance. For a state that has consigned most of its people to a life of unemployment, penury, crime and tambay, boksing, like billiards and bowling to a lesser extent, provides salvation. We love Manny for embodying the hope that even in the direst of times, unity is possible in watching and adoring the sports that offers temporary catharsis of all our miseries. This hope stems from the collective bond we continually build in mustering our strength and defeating the most formidable of enemies.
We watch and feel dismay once again that our public officials are with Manny, contaminating a much-beloved sport and national hero with partisan patronage. What is Noli de Castro doing in MGM?! Don’t our officials have important things to do that they have freed their time of everything else – our welfare – and watch Manny defeat a fellow from a fellow former Spanish colony?! It is just fitting that they bet their political stamina, the circulation of gimmickry and opportunistic chances, the love of money (and thus the root of all their evils), the people’s money, in Las Vegas. Vegas is the surplus and the place where in the kernel of deception, hopeful and hopeless people stake their claims for a better life. Activists of the 60s and 70s had termed it bureaucrat capitalism. Manny’s bout is one manifestation of its practice. And it was true then as it is truest now: they are using public offices to enrich their political—because—economic lives. The host is interviewing him now and is asking of his political calling. We plead that Manny will not fall into GMA’s trap. Many believe that such combination of sports show business and trapo politics is natural in Filipino political culture. We struggle against this reality. Indeed Manny’s congressional defeat in the 2007 elections sets off from the same discernment of the people: a life gloriously lived in boxing must be rewarded by refusal of him to be injected into a system that wages war against the skills, talents, achievements and critical intelligence of the masses.
Manny’s life is a testament to the many challenges we face. The dream of education which he now slowly realizes, a better future for his family, the everyday life that battles gambling, ostentatious display of wealth and self-annihilating pamamadron, are conditions we share. The ever-present danger that from the peak of success arrived at in a short time, one will stumble down to Navarrete-type of wretchedness, looms large in Manny’s horizon.
We most admire in Manny the discipline, that determination to carry out to the very end the fight that one so brilliantly launched, his resilience, and the humility that all these accomplishments are para sa ating lahat, the shoulders of the people on which he sits, and the hindsight that all his struggles are ours and will come to the best of ends.
Manny has indeed made history and he will do more of it. Just remember that the souls of the victorious trapos linger and loiter. And they have not ceased to be victorious. They will never accept defeat.
Sunday, 7 December 2008
As I write Manny Pacquiao has just won the historical fight against Golden Boy Oscar de la Hoya (based on GMA-7’s delayed telecast). The Filipino people love boxing for its evocative combination of brawn and brilliance. For a state that has consigned most of its people to a life of unemployment, penury, crime and tambay, boksing, like billiards and bowling to a lesser extent, provides salvation. We love Manny for embodying the hope that even in the direst of times, unity is possible in watching and adoring the sports that offers temporary catharsis of all our miseries. This hope stems from the collective bond we continually build in mustering our strength and defeating the most formidable of enemies.
We watch and feel dismay once again that our public officials are with Manny, contaminating a much-beloved sport and national hero with partisan patronage. What is Noli de Castro doing in MGM?! Don’t our officials have important things to do that they have freed their time of everything else – our welfare – and watch Manny defeat a fellow from a fellow former Spanish colony?! It is just fitting that they bet their political stamina, the circulation of gimmickry and opportunistic chances, the love of money (and thus the root of all their evils), the people’s money, in Las Vegas. Vegas is the surplus and the place where in the kernel of deception, hopeful and hopeless people stake their claims for a better life. Activists of the 60s and 70s had termed it bureaucrat capitalism. Manny’s bout is one manifestation of its practice. And it was true then as it is truest now: they are using public offices to enrich their political—because—economic lives. The host is interviewing him now and is asking of his political calling. We plead that Manny will not fall into GMA’s trap. Many believe that such combination of sports show business and trapo politics is natural in Filipino political culture. We struggle against this reality. Indeed Manny’s congressional defeat in the 2007 elections sets off from the same discernment of the people: a life gloriously lived in boxing must be rewarded by refusal of him to be injected into a system that wages war against the skills, talents, achievements and critical intelligence of the masses.
Manny’s life is a testament to the many challenges we face. The dream of education which he now slowly realizes, a better future for his family, the everyday life that battles gambling, ostentatious display of wealth and self-annihilating pamamadron, are conditions we share. The ever-present danger that from the peak of success arrived at in a short time, one will stumble down to Navarrete-type of wretchedness, looms large in Manny’s horizon.
We most admire in Manny the discipline, that determination to carry out to the very end the fight that one so brilliantly launched, his resilience, and the humility that all these accomplishments are para sa ating lahat, the shoulders of the people on which he sits, and the hindsight that all his struggles are ours and will come to the best of ends.
Manny has indeed made history and he will do more of it. Just remember that the souls of the victorious trapos linger and loiter. And they have not ceased to be victorious. They will never accept defeat.
1 comment:
Totoo po kayo, Sir. Parang Ayn Rand, kaso nga lang hindi "Prime Mover" a la John Galt si Manny Pacquiao... kung tutuusin, pwede na siyang "looter". Ngunit hindi makakaila na ang mga trapo ay walang pinagkaiba sa mga "looters" ni Ayn Rand...pare-pareho lang ang mga prinsipyo at layunin nila. Nakakatawang isipin na ang desyerto na dati'y walang kabuhay-buhay ay gumagawa ngayon ng pera para sa mga trapo at oportunistang nagpapasasa rito, mga taong humihingi ng pabuya alang-alang sa kanilang dakilang kasakiman at kawalan ng kakayanan.
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