Kris-Crossing Mindanao: Elegance / Antonio J. Montalvan II

In his acceptance speech during the 81ST Oscar awards held a few months after the US presidential inauguration, best actor Sean Penn, a known supporter of President Barack Obama did not, like many others, gush over the first black President.

Penn said something more remarkable: I am glad that we have elected into the White House an elegant man.

This subject about elegance came to mind during the hearings on the Senate committee report on the allegedly anomalous C-5 extension project, when the supporters and detractors of Sen. Manny Villar engaged themselves in verbal exchanges that made some viewers cringe in disgust.

The august chamber, others commented, had been so degraded that if they were alive today, Claro M. Recto, Lorenzo Taada, Jose Diokno, Gerardo Roxas, Benigno Aquino Jr. and even Ferdinand Marcos (may all their souls rest in peace), to name only a few, wouldnt be caught dead in it.

These were elegant men. in manner, dress and language they were elegant. They were elegant even in anger and never stooped to the gutter, at least not in full view of the public.

What happened to this tradition of legislative elegance? Whats with our present set of lawmakers?

Day by day the news, both print and broadcast, carry almost nothing of consequence except the depressing figures of job layoffs and unemployment, maltreated OFWs forced to come home to return to the misery and poverty they tried to lift their families from. Which now seems to be much more difficult to do with the rising prices of such basic commodities as flour and sugar, and now, water and electricity.

More than two months after the Maguindanao massacre, its victims seem to be still far from attaining justice, while Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is driving half of the populace half-crazy with her boast that the next president will be lucky to inherit her legacy.

And as if these were not enough, we have the much more depressing soundbites of the bickerings among the members of the Senate, all sound and fury signifying nothing but bad manners and unpassed vital pieces of legislation.

There are exceptions, of course.

There is, for example, one of my favorite persons, party-list Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, now candidate for senator, who must have been a Tausug princess in a past life (I have never seen the sablay worn more fittingly as a fashion statement), in her response to a senator of the land, Miriam Defensor-Santiago who once referred to her as an anonymous insect.

Calmly, in the relaxed manner of speech that I believe is a distinct trait of true nobility (reminiscent of Princess Tarhata Kiram), Baraquel countered: Hindi ako insekto. Obviously, akoy isang tao. at ganoon din ang turing ko sa kanya. (I am not an insect. Obviously, I am a human being. And that is how I regard her, too.)

But then perhaps this sad state of affairs is not entirely the fault of our honorable lawmakers. for how else can you cope with such scandals as Hello Garci, the NBN-ZTE scam, the fertilizer scam, the schoolchildrens noodles scam, the railway scam, the road scam, the highway scam, the Maguindanao firearms scam (we are not there yet) and the whole gang of 40 thieves unleashed on the landscape by this administration?

Surely you cannot make them see the utter grossness, crassness and shamelessness of their plunder with the language and manners of Jane Austen.

And that, one can surmise, is the crux of our problem with elegance. Which is that we are caught in such extraordinary times, one that goes beyond our collective sense of decency when the most hated person to ever occupy Malacaang established what is probably the most hated officialdom in the history of Philippine governance.

(Which is so unfair to the many decent men and women whose only misfortune was to join this administration. there was, for instance, the late much-liked and well-loved Cerge Remonde who had to cover up such things as breast implants and then, red-faced, to have to uncover them the next day.)

None and nothing can be better proof of this than the spectacle of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez who, at her own press conference last year held at the height of calls for her impeachment for sitting on such cases as those enumerated earlier in this column, asked the media to color the hair of former Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman (who has a fetish for a lock of colored fake hair pinned to her own), after which she laughed heartily at her own colorless, tasteless joke. Or cattiness.

And not to be forgotten is Ms Arroyos son, Rep. Mikey Arroyo, who with such comical arrogance commented in the aftermath of the famous Le Cirque lobster and steak dinner: Oo, libre. E ano namang problema nila kung libre? (Yes, the dinner was free. so whats their problem if it was free?) Close your eyes and imagine a member of the US Congress or the British Parliament saying anything close to that.

Now we have reason to dread the coming elections, because aside from the usual guns, goons and gold, we will once again witness the mudslinging that is as much a part of our election history as the so-called 3Gs.

In fact, it has begun. Although it is being done in a more subtle but underhanded way that is no less sarcastic, no less biting. Listen to Manny Villars ads and speeches about the experiences of the mahirap like him as opposed to herederos like Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas.

I wonder to what levels of inelegance the presidential candidates will lower themselves to in the heat of todays scheduled debate at the UP Theater. Might as well go and listen for ourselves.

( Comments to rubaiyat19@yahoo.com )

Kris-Crossing Mindanao : Elegance / Antonio J. Montalvan II