Monday, September 01, 2008 Mercado: PGMA, Among Ed compared By Ram Mercado
WHAT ails Apu Ceto?
Governor Panlilio should find consolation that the same ordeal and anguish that he is undergoing now are not unlike the difficulties and pain that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo suffers in quiet.
The venom that her detractors spew around is similarly lethal as the toxicity of the calumny thrown to Among Ed.
Since the 2004 polls, her enemies have relentlessly pursued a hate campaign against the President. Today they are still demanding for her impeachment or resignation.
Similarly, since the 2007 polls Governor Panlilio has carried his cross on which his own detractors plot to crucify him.
I do not know what and how many "stations" Among Ed has gone through. I do not see any local Simon of Cyrene in sight to help him carry his burden.
President Gloria, through a woman's innate sense of empathy, would surely understand the priest-governor's current travails as Pampanga's chief executive. If she has sympathy for a fellow sufferer, she does not show it.
Definitely she empathizes with Among Ed's agony in the garden. The Governor will not sweat blood albeit wounded by his former "apostles" who not only denied him but left him to bleed by his lonesome.
"Hindi ka nagiisa, Among Ed. Even President Gloria had been cruelly denied by the Hyatt 10 who also abandoned her during a crucial moment.
Both the President and Governor Ed must have realized by now that what does not kill makes you stronger. And stronger the two remain in their conviction, the former in her vow to finish her term of office until 2010, the latter to hold on to it until his crucifixion.
If it is a remarkable coincidence, PGMA's infamous Hyatt 10, comprising Cabinet members and senior government officers, have their equivalent in Panlilio's administration - the ten or more senior officers at the Capitol who quit/abdicated their positions in protest.
A much maligned point man in the Arroyo administration is retired General Hermogenes Esperon Jr. He has been the target of concentrated attack from hostile forces and the enemies of the President. His counterpart in the Capitol is the provincial administrator, Atty. Vivian Dabu, against whom the local kingdom of mice and men conspire to annihilate.
Mrs. Arroyo, in a resolute display of faith in the former AFP chief of staff, has kept him in the service to this very moment. Among Ed, likewise, in principled stubbornness, has declared that the lady of his trust is beyond "negotiation" even if they will go down together come what may! That is character. You do not feed a work partner to the lions even it is Nero himself who orders the sacrifice to please the riotous crowd.
I wonder why some local quarters shout their admiration for Mrs. Arroyo's obstinacy in keeping General Esperon to her cause while in a louder protestation denounce Among Ed for keeping Ms. Dabu to his own.
The Hyatt 10 is destructively active in undermining the Arroyo administration and discrediting her achievements. The former Capitol executives, similarly, are active in anti-Panlilio efforts of varied leadership and prejudice.
Mrs. Arroyo appreciates Panlilio's difficulties in empathy. This is a woman's deep instinct as primordial as the human conscience. It is in this context, I feel, that Mrs. Arroyo would not lend a vindictive and unjust hand in helping Among Ed's foes, most of them her allies, to oust him through the Recall process. The costly exercise divides residents and sows disharmony among the Catholic populace.
I have received confidential information that Archbishop of San Fernando, "Apu Ceto", leader of almost two million Kapampangan faithful, has been quartered and kept out of his many pastoral and socio-religious functions due to certain physical indisposition. Seldom been seen in his usual rounds, he has been sighted in long prayers or meditation in a private chapel. What seems to bother or pain the holy man?
The Archbishop, who is not known to telegraph his personal feelings or the understandable stress related to what is happening in his province, has been reported "sickly." Is it due to the spiritual strain on the sensitive soul of the prelate caused by the warring and divided local faithful related to the Panlilio ouster move?
Among Ed is still a priest, whether inactive, on leave or on AWOL. Gov. Panlilio and Apu Ceto belong to the same clerical (Catholic) flock. While the local politicians, along with certain civil society activists, are "skinning" the lamb (Among Ed), in effect they are also "shearing" the chief shepherd (the Archbishop).
Thus if, indeed, Apu Ceto is hurting in private, he must be agonizing in his own Gethsemane while his popular pastor undergoes his present Calvary at the historic Capitol which has of late become an undeclared disaster area, if not an infamous slaughterhouse run by the usual suspects' hit men and executioners.
