Susan, stay put / biblical warnings

MANILA, January 7, 2005 (STAR) HERE'S THE SCORE By Teodoro C. Benigno
- A name that has soared into our political stratosphere is Susan Roces.
Suddenly she is a name that counts, that has barged into our political
consciousness like a comet. Her husband Fernando Poe Jr. had to die, a
virtual martyr to the cause of the poor, before Ms. Roces found her
voice. It was a voice that rang true, utterly devoid of political
mumbo-jumbo, a gust of exhilarating wind that could say in one sentence or
two what our professional politicians would pontificate in the better
part of an hour.

Ms. Roces was and remains an extremely attractive woman, a movie
actress in her own right, moving, talking and gesturing with an elegance
that easily impressed the onlooker. And yet she didn't talk really very
much until she took on Karen Davila of ABS-CBN and Mel Tiangco of GMA-7.
Then she poured it on. Then we realized how hurt and aggrieved she was -
and, of course, FPJ - by the cavalier, at times brutal, media treatment
of FPJ during the presidential campaign. Still, he persevered. But the
price was too great to pay.

In a word, Susan Roces accused both networks of somewhat marginalizing
coverage of her husband, relegating him to an unhinged hanging garden of
Babylon while giving other presidential candidate, like President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo, the works. This was very obvious, she said, FPJ'S
overflow crowds were bumped off the screen, giving the impression he had
a scant following when the opposite was true. He had the biggest, most
adoring crowds.

She was, of course, right.

Not only was FPJ not given panoramic treatment on the nation's two
largest TV stations. He was - and I feel quite guilty about this - dumbed
down by media as an ignoramus, fit to be entombed by the Guinness Book of
World Records, a pretender, and a quack. Now that we look back. He was
not. He was a lonely pilgrim on the road to Malacañang, honest and
sincere, who loved and cared for the poor. All right, the job was too big
for him, too daunting, a whirl into another world he new very little
about. He could have messed it up. But isn't GMA, with all her education,
messing up things right now?

But did FPJ have to be cheated? Did his Filipino citizenship have to be
cast in grave and scandalous doubt? Did the elite, the powers that be,
and this includes the Church, have the moral right to dump FPJ and
virtually award the presidency to GMA?

Now, in hindsight, I don't think so. And this is why Susan Roces and
their legion of followers have drummed up the courage - after FPJ's death
- to point their accusing finger at the elite and the powers-that-be.
That's why GMA is scared, fearful that the hungry crowds in Paris in 1789
would replicate themselves in Metro Manila. And what's why the
scandal-ridden military wouldn't have the nerve to take over power,
knowing the public would blow their boots off in massive street
demonstrations. .

But I have this to say for Ms. Susan Roces.

By staying on your side of the line so far, you have done the nation a
great lot of good. You have shown us the face of honesty, integrity and
courage, a widow's face wreathed in simple and stirring eloquence,
calling a spade a spade without the drawn blade of arrogance. Stay that
way, Susan. Don't ever be inveigled by voices around you, calling upon
you to formally head the opposition, run the presidential streak to
Malacañang. These are the very voices that ruined FPJ, that lined his
course with thorns and thistles. In the end, he was bloodied, and possibly
died of heartache.

Yours would be a role already honored and rendered proud by Eleanor
Roosevelt, widow of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By Sonja Gandhi, widow of
Rajiv Gandhi, by Loretta King, widow of Martin Luther King. They resisted
all offers to enter politics. Instead, they became the revered symbols of
the opposition, even the nation, whipping in the wind like a flock of
white birds only when it was time to speak. And they were universally
loved.

You must have tumbled from a cloud or rainbow somewhere. Stay that way
Ms. Susan Roces. There's nobody quite like you.

* * *

Many of my readers were quite struck by my recent column titled Why,
Lord, Why? in the wake of the tsunami that struck at South Asia with a
devastation that was almost biblical. Eventually, 200,000 people will
have died in that "shock and awe" upheaval. It's only now on our TV
screens that we see the extent of the destruction, and we are dumbstruck.

So I figured, in this reeling world massively stunned by the tsunami,
believer and non-believer would still be mesmerized by more passages from
the bible on "calamities". Here is the prophet Isaiah on God's wrath:

"For I am the Lord your God, who churns up the sea so that its waves
roar - the Lord Almighty is his name. The Day of the Lord will come like
the destruction from the Almighty. Because of this, all hands will go
limp, every man's heart will melt. Terror will seize them, pain and
anguish will grip them; they will writhe like woman in labor; they will
look aghast at each other, their faces aflame.The stars of heaven and
their constellations will not give their light. The rising sun will be
darkened and the moon will not give its light. I will punish the world for
its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will put an end to the arrogance
of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless. I will make man
scarcer than pure gold, more rare than the gold of Ophir. Therefore I
will make the heavens tremble and the earth will shake from its place at
the wrath of the Lord Almighty, in the day of his burning anger. ' Isaiah
3: 6-13).

What follows are portions of the Book of Revelations on the Destruction
of the Earth:

"Then I saw another angel flying in mid-air and he had the eternal
gospel to proclaim to those who live on earth - to every nation, tribe,
language, people. He said in a loud voice: 'Fear God and give him glory,
because the hour of his judgement has come. Worship him who made the
heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water.

"And out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying 'It is
done!' Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder,
and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has occurred since man has
been on earth, so tremendous was that quake. Every island fled away and
the mountains could not be found. From the sky, huge hailstones of about
a hundred pounds each fell upon men. And they cursed God on account of
the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible.

"And the sun was given power to scorch people with fire. They were
seared by the intense heat. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and
there was no place for them. And I saw the dead. Great and small, standing
before his throne and books were opened. Another book was opened, which
was the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had
done as recorded in the books.

"Then I saw a new earth and a new heaven for the first heaven and the
first earth had passed away. There will be no more death or mourning or
crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was
seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new. I am the Alpha
and the Omega, the beginning and the end."

These words, these stirrings from the Bible have a strange effect on
me. Again, I ask the Almighty why He poured His wrath, if indeed He did,
on a cluster of relatively poor and primitive countries in South Asia.
Then stretching my imagination, I ask again is the tsunami in South Asia
simply a prelude? Will there be more such tsunamis this time in the West
where the wanton and the wicked, the rich and the affluent live in
prodigal splendor?

I don't know. All I know is that the tsunami in South Asia has blown me
sky-high, where my usual bearings and store of knowledge cannot answer
all the questions. It is also possible the tsunami in South Asia was
intended to make humanity realize life simply dangled from a piece of
string, and in this circumstance nobody was rich or powerful or poor and
powerless.

Is that why the world has come together? Why America now realizes that
9/11 with just under 3000 casualties was not the big thing it was blown
up to be, and that it too could be ravaged by a tsunami against which it
wouldn't have much defense for all its military might? Why everybody,
white or black, brown or yellow, feels it has a bounden duty to succor
the stricken of South Asia?

Again, I am just asking questions. I don't really know.

Early on, before the tsunami, I wouldn't have given the passages I
extracted from the Bible much of a tumble. But there they are, each word
quivering before me, of an Almighty but vengeful God who wrought
creation, but finding out creation had spun only fool's gold and the
insolence and ingratitude of man would now crush it by making the earth
shake as it never shook before? And the seas rage as they never raged
before?

Honestly, I don't know.

From: lquesada@newsflash.org