Lozada
Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr. was to be a minstrel about to sing his own lore of captivity and finding the light of truth to Cebuano, and he was thinking that a mammoth crowd will listen to his tale or accost him along his way for autograph. Probably, the organizers of the forum filled his ears of a Cebu with very warm and feverish welcome. But the crowd that gathered to hear Lozada was markedly thin, and was reluctant to be counted as his avid supporters, and was doubly more skeptical of him after the forum than before. The event that he and his ilk hoped to fish more people has netted the opposite. Students, who made up much of the audience, were more uncertain than they already were.
What did Lozada exactly achieved in that gathering? Foremost, he earned the ire of Cebuanos by antagonizing the Church. Archdiocese of Malacanang, he says. Congressman in cassock, the Black and White Movement says. Cebuanos, I dare say, are strangers to themselves without religion and to remove its supremacy and Vidal in their political and social actions is to risk their wrath. That’s why successful protests, those that can muster the number of participants beyond reckoning, in Osmena rotunda are garlanded by nuns and rosaries and the Eucharist. And Vidal. This is political maturity, Cebu- and Philippine-style.
Secondly, Lozada appears to be drunk with popularity. Well, this seems to people who attended the forum. Hero worship, they say, and they cry bitterly why they were lured to promote Lozada without their knowing. Cebuanos, if you want them to take you seriously, like to be considered intellectuals. They want to take part, to be where the action is, something deprived of them by distance and the “imperialist” Manila.
So when Lozada materialized before them, they didn’t kiss his forehead and handed him a gold star. They didn’t extract their pentel pens and plead for a signature. Instead, they eyed Lozada through the lens of questions and skepticism. But when it was clear that organizers do not want Lozada to be grilled akin to a legislative hearing, and manhandled a certain “Po” out of the gathering because he asked questions like a senator, many were enraged. They weren’t there to increase Lozada’s vanity.
They were there to increase theirs.
Thirdly, Cebuanos do not want to be plagued by apathy. But this does not mean they join any street protest and let truncheons fall on their heads for crying out loud any day. As I hinted earlier, our intellect is the grim persistence of extreme doubt. The media, yes, may feed us of terrible looting and 130million dollar kickback. It may invoke the memory of the First Quarter Storm of 1970 and smolder patriotism in our soul.
However, if you hope to see us enraged, of which we are quick and slow depending on who and what is the situation, complete the story and make the narrative inevitably compelling. The shortcut is to let us see our leaders, the religious and not government, visit our schools and bring us to the streets. The shortcut is through the pulpits every Sunday to morally justify civil disobedience. Only by then we become earnest and adamant.
The first two Lozada failed to satiate. The last one, the crucial straw to drag our participation to the streets to seek redress, is thus not forthcoming.
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