The cool and the fury of General Esperon

It took but a quick change of clothes and refreshing face wash to clear the slime and shake off the odour of a couple of eggs, who made history as their yolks exploded with wrath over the generals’ shoulder, near where three ill-gotten stars of rank jumped with fright, and on his cheek, which has grazed the faces of more liars and murderers than politically-indignant eggs can ever dream of hurling themselves at.

Lt. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon stepped out of the bathroom with a gentleman’s smile.

Facing cameras, the Armed Forces of the Philippines chief-of-staff says with full equanimity that he has forgiven those disgraceful radicals who pelted him with eggs and mud after he spoke at a forum in the state university. In a barely disguised condescending voice and a smirk that was meant to radiate tolerance and understanding, he dismissed the slogan-bearing lot who chanted “Inutang na dugo ng pasistang militar, singilin, singilin, pagbayarin!” as “bad eggs,” normal but negligible defects in a society with imperfect decorum.

But the students have far from forgiven. In fact, they have barely begun counting the general’s sins. These fiery youths have decided, eons of political study ago, to eschew proper manners in a country where it is demanded of the jobless, the hungry, the landless by the highest officials of the land who themselves defecate all over in public. These enlightened progenitors of the First Quarter Storm had wanted to show the people that social justice should be the more pressing concern for all.

Before the powerful Commission on Appointments, Gen. Esperon faced a routinary fusillade of questions as mildly disconcerting to him as furiously thrown eggs. “Tell us, having been name-dropped in the Hello Garci tapes, what was your true involvement in the alleged cheating that took place in the 2004 elections? Was your role in the elections that reason why the President promoted you to the command?” (Your Honors, I cannot comment on the insinuations made in a taped conversation between President Arroyo and election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano whose veracity has yet to be proven.) What can you say about the military being the perpetrators of extrajudicial killing, abduction, arrest and torture of hundreds of activists, as claimed by witnesses and human rights groups? (Your Honors, said witnesses and human rights groups are all communists who are just waging black propaganda against the military.) Will the AFP at least look into the data that shows an extraordinary rise in the number of civilians killed in the province which fell under the command of one Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan? (Certainly, the military will investigate, but I think Gen. Palparan has made it clear that he has no direct hand in these killings, though he may have inspired hate and violence against communists, which in itself is not a crime.)

Complicit, half-helpless, the most responsible of them even standing up to shake his hand and grin for photographs, Gen. Esperon retreated from a “hot seat” barely warm to resume his career unruffled.

Already, sinister men were stalking those students still flushed with the ecstasy of a precious point driven home for martyrs, their names and faces entering a secret database some fresh, some already all too dangerously familiar to it.