Tuesday, September 23, 2008 Obenieta: Through hell and high water By Myke U. Obenieta So to speak
SAD but true, many of us are so damn good at being bad. Surely our baby hair were not soaked in or sprinkled with a bit of sewer at baptism. And so it’s an itch to inquire how come we end up having heads that rarely stay above the slough of ill will.
If we could gargle holy water, would we stop spitting out fire at somebody who might drive us fuming mad? Would we hold our tongues back from getting smoky with sarcasm?
About a paradise on earth, or at least in his state of Arizona, a greenhorn legislator, Henry Ashurst, ended up the butt of jokes long after his speech in the U.S. Senate. “We need only two things,” he proposed. “Water and lots of good people.”
Not impressed, an older colleague got up grumpy and interrupted: “If the Senator will pardon me for saying so, that’s all they need in Hell!”
In the heat of feuds among Cebu’s politicians, former President Fidel Ramos might as well have taken the side of the naïve but well-meaning Arizona senator.
Regarding the impending water crisis in Cebu, Ramos sounded like he wished we had more good people in power as he worried about “local officials at odds with each other.”
Polarization in politics is all we need of hell, Ramos hinted as he advised the emergency for a multi-agency body to oversee the planning in Cebu. “When it comes to water, it should not be subject to politics because this will benefit not the politicians but the many generations after us,” Ramos said. “If they can’t work together, then there are government agencies that can take care of that.”
Though he’s not hot about the ex-president’s proposition, Mayor Tomas Osmeña at least opted to keep his blood from boiling and steered clear from his usual spitfire stance. Placid. That’s how he seemed about his plan not to seek the aid of foreign investors, preferring to solve Cebu’s problem by sourcing water from local suppliers against Ramos’s advice.
For a while there, the mayor showed he could disagree without being, well, disagreeable. No war-mongering words, unlike what usually made him a pain in the neck of Cebu’s governor with whom he’s been no more in a muddle than oil and water.
Not a bite, unlike what left Congressman Antonio Cuenco stung in the face when the mayor reportedly called Cuenco a snake. (Bitter, Osmeña was allegedly miffed at Cuenco for leaving party mates high and dry in the barangay elections last year.)
If the mayor could tap that inner lake of tranquility and show a reservoir of humility, he would then loom no less powerful than a waterfall. He would show that goodwill would not go against the current of synergy, without which—as Ramos suggested—unity and progress would be water through the gutter.
Or, Osmeña could always stay in the mood for pissing straight to the stars while his detractors wish for him to grow up for good.
