utting to risk the
lives of 26 school children and four teachers to put across one’s message of
discontent with how pols are running the country to the ground certainly is not
an action associated with a "normal" person. There are acceptable ways of
decrying iniquity and injustice in this world. One can write letters to the
editor, call a public affairs program, stage a picket in front of Malacañang (if
only for a few seconds before the cops haul the offender to the precinct), mount
a soapbox at Plaza Miranda and, yes, go out and vote and throw out those
bastards.
Holding people hostage and threatening to blow them up with a
grenade to kingdom come is outside the pale of acceptable political discourse.
That’s is the reason Malacañang was uncomfortable and edgy when Armando Ducat, a
Tondo boy who made good, staged his 10-hour melodrama in the heart of Manila the
other day. Government officials had to keep the hostage-taker calm. They had to
concede the justness of Ducat’s cry from the heart. Corruption is leading the
nation to ruination. Poverty will remain the people’s lot with the current
leaders on top.
Ducat made an exception of Gloria Arroyo, whom he conceded
was sincere and doing the best she can. But Palace officials knew this was mere
"consuelo de bobo." Ducat was indicting the system and Gloria, as president,
could not be singled out for acquittal.
After the hostages were released and Ducat surrendered, the
Palace was singing a different song. Ducat should not be treated as a hero. What
he did was wrong. He should answer for his crime so that all those screwballs
out there should not try to follow his example.
Let’s go into social-psychology. In a dysfunctional social
system, its members can’t make sense of what is happening around them. Their
response is the familiar pathologies of drunkenness, violence, abuse of women
and children, crime, terrorism and the like. The individual who has reached the
end of his string resorts to violence, either to himself through suicide or to
others through assault or homicide. Standard pop social psychology so far.
The worrisome element introduced by Ducat is the immediate
leap from personal to the political. Clearly he is not a subscriber to Gloria’s
belief that the poor go hungry because they would rather spend for cellphone
load than buy rice and instant noodles. In Ducat’s mind, there is something
terribly unjust with the system and it is not only his right but in fact his
duty to call attention to this terrible wrong.
What was Ducat’s immediate concern? Education for the kids
who are enjoying free schooling in a day care he set up. There are many layers
of mediation between education of 26 kids to calling for an overhaul of the
political system. Ducat made the shortcut. We have a case of what some writers
call political "over-determination." Every social ill is immediately displaced
from its immediate surroundings and condenses into the political level.
Are there more Ducats out there? We don’t know. Suffice it to
note that among Ducat’s calls was for the holding of an evening prayer rally for
this country’s salvation. Hundreds came, lighting candles whose flickering
flames seemed to defy the stabbings of the revolving blue and red lights coming
from the roofs of police cars.
There must be a message to our leaders.
