“You mean, in a convoy of four cars, and still he wound up at the wrong exit?” remarks an inveterate meddler.
“Well, he was in the lead car—I wouldn’t blame the escorts,” I say.
But she won’t let go: “The proper exit was a mere 150 meters away!”
“Ah, but proper is for ordinary mortals like you and me,” I remind her. “He is the mayor of Makati, and on his second term, although why he goes around testing people—‘Don’t you know me?’—I don’t quite understand.”
Well, she has the answer: “People like them usually can’t believe their good fortune, and somehow feel undeserving.”
“You’re probably right. But he can count on some seniors like me to not ever forget that face: It’s on my blue card, my all-important, lifetime card, the one that entitles me to all cash and certain noncash benefits as well as birthday and Christmas goodies for the rest of my life. It’s not like a business permit, on which, since renewable and revocable, that face could one day go.”
I had precisely complained about it in this column, in behalf of fellow seniors who felt the same way about that face, and promptly got a call from City Hall, announcing, breathlessly, as if I had won the lotto, that the mayor would like to meet with me.
I told the voice on the phone my point was so plain it precluded discussing. Later, the mayor was quoted in this paper as saying that he knew nothing about how his picture got there, that, indeed, it shouldn’t be there, and that he’d do something about it. He didn’t; he hasn’t.
“I wonder who gave the video to the Inquirer,” my single-minded meddler returns me to her subject. “It’s going viral on the Internet.”
Dramatic video
But, of course, the video is just too dramatic to not be shared.
The mayor steps out of his car, an aide holding an umbrella over his head on a rainless night, reminiscent of the parasoled princess in the Moro dance singkil, and his senator sister standing by, one arm akimbo. Leading with his forefinger, he approaches the gate guard and gives him the old test (surely, as young as he is, it can’t be amnesia), “Do you not know me?”
“Hard enough in the dark, and that umbrella doesn’t help,” our meddler shakes her head.
An Internet commentator has suggested the umbrella may have been used to shield the mayor from the CCTV.
I don’t know, but it actually helps me spot him even more easily; but again I see his face every time I pull out my blue card. The young guard obviously could use a hint, say, big, luminous prints on the umbrella that proclaim Binay.
Also, as it happens, the guard was focused on business: Nobody leaves or enters through Banyan gate after 10 p.m. To him, not apparently one to complicate things for oneself, nobody meant everybody.
It all happened a month ago, and has been settled with everybody put in their groveling places vis-à-vis the mayor. No one is surprised.
Bad news
Fresh from a trip to South Africa, where he was lost among the world’s giants burying Mandela, Papa Binay came home to this stale piece of bad news. Surely he couldn’t have missed what is obvious to all: His son has a problem coming to political power prematurely.
I just hope Papa Binay gave it to him at least privately, never mind if in public he lamented his son had not been given the courtesy his office demanded.
In fact, the mayor demanded exemption from a rule, an entitlement he obviously presumes attached to the position and possibly his name.
Had he simply gone the extra 150 meters—by car yet, not on foot—to show respect for security rules, he would have walked away taller in the eyes of everyone, and his gun-brandishing bodyguards would have been taught a lesson in restraint.
Be humble and shine, like Jesse Robredo, if the mayor would remember; or Pope Francis himself, who has chosen to lead his faithful and his church back to the path of humility, accountability and change.
The choice is ours, but we’re all going to get it when and where we need it most, and the higher one’s perch the longer the slide down.
Case in point
A case in point involves an older veteran of politics, Juan Ponce Enrile, and his only son and heir, Jackie, who, himself known to have gotten away with serious cases of abuse of power and privilege, lost badly in the last senatorial polls. They have been mutually contributory to each other’s downslide.
Papa Binay, considered the man to beat for president in 2016, and his dynasty may yet meet their own humbling. The victory of his children, unripe for public office as they seem to begin proving themselves to be, as revealed in the viral video, may begin as well to be negated.
Indeed, nobody can humble us or do us proud like our own flesh and blood. Blessing or bane, children are unlike life as defined by Forrest Gump, who compares it with a box of chocolates: “You never know what you’re going to get.”
We in fact know early enough. After all, our children learn by our example.
Here’s to new beginnings, cheers!
