Vidal and Lozada
Manila’s irascibility is waning, and judging by the way things are going, ZTE-NBN deal is lapsing to one of the tempests that may rap the seat of power but not uproot President Arroyo. This is her genius of stonewalling; by bidding her time, her silence has become yet most useful means to lull people and dull them to submission and forgetfulness.
Then this war, as oppositions and critic say that this is war with them at the helm leading the champions and PGMA the Snow Queen, is brought from Manila to the provinces. This is the bitter pill of a country archipelagic by Creation and divided by elitism. Manila, by which I mean National Capital Region, is Philippines and beyond its borders lies the wasteland, the marshes, the folks untutored of the ways of democracy and current events. So the need of the campaign to the countryside, to make people there matter and be counted, as if we owe them our existence and we be thankful for them doing so. As if we have not participated in this war, if war it is called, with better means than they have.
And Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr. they package as the bearer of light, the one who has witnessed the truth and is its captive, to be the Prodding Stick – the editors of SunStar Cebu so brilliantly coined – and the Prophet who like Moses will cut through the sea of apathy for the many to see the passage to redemption. He would stir hearts and stoke anger in them, so that by his words an assault to presidency shall commence and a New Order will be wrought.
But people who brought Lozada to Cebu are mistaken. We have our own prodding stick and prophet, Archbishop Cardinal Vidal, whose wariness is such that it drives people to inaction, whose spiritual guidance has been caution, prayer and lethargy. But Cebuanos lend their ears open for his words. They don’t like to be estranged from the Catholic herd and to oppose the prelate is to sever ties from the flock. We bray as Cardinal Vidal brays and mum as he is mum. We are obedient to his orders, and believe him to every single word that escapes his lips. When he says we don’t need Lozada, we don’t need Lozada. When he says Cebuanos know the truth, we know the truth.
Which exactly was what he did.
He says since Cebuanos know the whole truth, Lozada’s coming is no necessity. No one minded that when Presidential Management Staff Cerge Remonde spoke before the clergy, nuns and lay leaders in a monthly recollection Monday last week to explain the ZTE-NBN deal, no one among our religious questioned why Remonde and if his speech is important, how can less is Lozada’s. Here the prelate seems to have the strangest definition of truth and how it should be ferreted out. Our religion listens to Remonde, a fellow Cebuano, because Vidal blesses so and believes Remonde is indispensable. Lozada? ‘We do not need (to invite Lozada). We understand already,’ was his reply. This is the kind of wisdom we find our beloved prelate dispenses: contradiction, confused, and wanting.
But we heed him despite our misgivings. Sheeps find it easier to make peace with their own doubts than doubt the shepherd.
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