Not-so-sweet surrender, Johnny lately

SABBATICAL NOTES. 4 JULY 2014. FRIDAY. N1. 
Not-so-sweet surrender, Johnny lately. 

THE REPORTED surrender of senator Juan Ponce Enrile, the feared Martial Law administrator with his pit-bulls from MISG to NICA, is a relief.

With his military connections, with misplaced loyalties in the Philippines, anything can blow up without any sign in much the same way that the coup d' etat against the yellow-ribbon president became a cottage industry in the 80s, right after People Power I, when some routes to democracy were not to the liking of the man so accustomed to be being followed, his order like the God of Abraham.

Dear God, he is 90.

The prayer of many of us who saw what Martial Law Philippine-style was is for him to say the word, say the story that we want to hear, the same story that admits his wrong-doing.

Say it truthfully, not his autobiographic version that uses a 'panangitan-on-iti-bagi' framework.

Say it with a heart. Say it with a soul. Say it with a mind that is mindful of the power of counter-myth, counter-narrative, counter-story.

For history--that history of the truthful kind--will judge him even when he has passed on to another realm.

When one is old, that is the time to count your deeds: count the sons you have, the trees you planted, and the books you wrote.

Literally.

Figuratively.

There is no sense leaving everything behind and reproduce the delusion of grandeur one has acquired by working for all the others similarly affected with the same illness of the body, mind, spirit, and soul.

There is such a thing as metanoia.

It is conversion.

It is Saul becoming Paul.

Johnny Ponce Enrile can make Cagayan proud again by doing that.

FELIPENAS/