Tuesday, February 06, 2007 Obenieta: Signifying nothing By Myke U. Obenieta So to Speak
THERE'S something out of the ordinary, if not a freak streak, about a mouth wishing to be mute. Pretty much like a market vendor who abhors rumors, yes.
It’s strange, too, when a crowd-pleaser—like politicians who are supposed to be born with a microphone for a Siamese twin—opts to be cozy in the blur of the background.
Where election campaigns often sound like elocution contests, it’s effusively refreshing as the breeze of Boljoon to chance upon a politician who behaves like there’s not a crumb of cliché about silence’s worth in gold.
Last week, while attending the funeral wake for poet-physician Rene Estella Amper in Boljoon, where he once served as town mayor, a garrulous group of us writers found it eccentric that the incumbent opted to keep himself inconspicuous, with his lips sealed.
True, not a pipsqueak from him as the whole town cottoned onto the outpouring of tributes for their dear departed. Instead of smacking his lips for the opportunity to grandstand, the mayor just let the others steal the thunder from him with eulogies.
He’s notorious for his reticence, remarked an editor friend. Mum to the media, the said mayor is allegedly allergic to interviews. Which is pleasantly shocking and no less outlandish in a culture where politicians seem to have Energizer batteries under their tongues.
Ah, it would certainly alleviate our woe about global warming if all our politicians would hold their gaseous breath for a change and forfeit their propensity for poisoning the air especially when the election draws near.
This early, we voters have to brace for the boomerang of sulfur-coated spit as mudslinging—on top of the usual self-aggrandizing prattle in lieu of a platform— becomes fashionable all the way to the balloting in May.
It’s fun, yes, if you have the stomach for strident tongue-lashing so patently entertaining in telenovela conflicts.
Consider, for instance, the headline-hogging feud between sports honcho Jonathan Guardo and his prospective congressional rival Rep. Antonio Cuenco. Firing off his election salvo, Cuenco twits at Guardo: “We don’t play basketball in Congress.”
Desperate, thus Guardo pooh-poohed Cuenco who alleged that drug lords are out to bankroll Guardo’s campaign. Wishing to see Cuenco with a mangy foot in his mouth, Guardo wants a lie detector test.
A variation on this belligerent theme will likely prevail in the days ahead, as it did in previous duels among ballot-hungry bets. And if you think otherwise, dreaming of an angelic chorus of candidates resounding with the reason of their agenda worthy of public trust, you’re either dead or just stone-deaf.
