There is something about “pagtug-an.”
“Disclosure” does not quite capture the meaning of this Cebuano word, which denotes someone’s volunteering of previously confidential information.
“Disclosure” sounds regular and impersonal. It seems to privilege an utterance rather than its source: Information is reported. Prognoses are conveyed. Statements are made public. Top-secret documents are declassified.
What about “revelation”? How does it compare? “Revelation” can sound a tad too elevated, echoing from a time deep within and transcending time. But it can also sound overly neighborly, a cliche fermented in the grapevine, favored by gossip’s sommeliers.
How about “confidence”? How lovely this descendant of Latin, still clearly brimming “with faith.” “Confidence” comes close, but since confiding takes place between confidantes, it somehow lacks the power of “pagtug-an.”
We fumble for an English equivalent to a very specialized context for using “pagtug-an.” Picture this skit: Children play in the kitchen. One breaks a plate. An angry mother comes in and exclaims: “Who did it? Pagsulti sa tinuod (Tell the truth)!”
Invariably she would continue: “Walay motug-an (Will no one confess)?”
Ah, there it is.
“Confession” may be the closest English word to the Cebuano “pagtug-an” save for the rarity of occasions to use “confess” in the imperative. “Confess,” said (almost) no one ever. But on these isles, given the scandals riddling the Philippine public sphere, we must holler: “Pagtug-an mo sa tinuod (You all confess to the truth)!”
If only more of us engaged in pagtug-an, in owning up, first of all before God or conscience, our faults.
As long as we eschew a culture of confession, gambling will remain on a pedestal, a government-sanctioned, purported economic dynamo that actually pushes Filipinos off the precipice to squalor and penury.
We will spurn our Jiminy Crickets’ jeremiads, loath to admit that we cannot build our common wealth on machinery that is oiled by the (mis)fortunes of losers.
Flood control funds will continue to be disbursed amid official denial of their misallocation or application to ineffectual projects. Maps that show watercourses, which ought to guide urban design, will become like wisdom from of old: familiar and unheeded.
The tempest that today demands probity from every journalist amid furor over paid vanity projects passed off as journalism will blow over, with nary an acknowledgment that quality reporting costs and merits multiple modalities of public funding.
Senators will habitually toss impeachment cases to the Senate’s archives instead of holding trials so long as only the minority recognizes how fatal to our democracy is contesting our Charter’s bidding for an impeached official to be tried at once.
Malacañang will keep churning out statements such as the one for Ninoy Aquino Day 2025, which alludes to vague lessons from, points to an abstract clarity about, and refrains from explicitly mentioning the hero’s assassination.
Another Cebuano word that is hard to translate but has the spirit of confession’s opposite, “occlusion” — which someone inflicts on those whom she or he deprives of due truth — is “pagluom.” It denotes keeping to oneself what can and ought to be communicated.
Villains may occlude, but truth will out, and their villainy will rise like filthy, black smoke. “Walay aso nga makumkom,” the Cebuano aphorism goes. “One cannot clutch at smoke.”
Heroes, admitting where they fall short, can see and be fired by the distance they can go. Their confession can turn from an admission of guilt into a sacred revelation.