WHOM THE GODS WISH TO DESTROY

By Mauro Gia Samonte

"For those whom God to ruin has design'd, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind."

John Dryden

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It did look like President Benigno Aquino III had been thrown out of his senses when in a nationally-televised event that was the Criminal Justice Summit in December last year he threw all decorum to the wind and before the eyes of the nation vented his ire on Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato C. Corona, who was among the distinguished guests.

The President particularly riled against what he called CJ Corona’s “midnight appointment” as Chief Magistrate of the High Tribunal; the Supreme Court ruling that the Truth Commission was unconstitutional; and the Supreme Court TRO that effectively lifted the BI watch list order banning travel abroad by former PGMA.

The President did not mention the Supreme Court order awarding his family-owned 6,000-plus hectare Hacienda Luisita to its tenant farmers, but considering that his tirade against the Chief Justice came right on the heels of that SC ruling (announced November 24), it would make him inhuman if he were not raging from it as well.

Her sister Kris came on Twitter declaring: “We will survive the Supreme Court.”

As though taking cue from his amazingly candid and inexplicably popular sibling, the President thereafter went on a binge of blasts against Chief Justice Corona, highlighted by his defiance of the Supreme Court TRO against the BI watch list order banning travel abroad by GMA and the subsequent filing of electoral sabotage charges that resulted in placing the former president under hospital arrest.

The President’s obsession to damn the SC Chief Justice seemed insatiable. Soon after, he did not make much effort to hide his steering congress into filing impeachment charges against CJ Corona. And with the start of the impeachment trial middle of January 2012, the beginning of the year signaled the Chief Executive’s crowing glory against the Chief Justice.

Finally in the run-up to the 26^th commemoration of the so-called EDSA revolt of 1986, President Aquino went on a speaking tour among the studentry, clearly intending to mobilize the likes of the crowd that attended the original people rising that drove President Ferdinand E. Marcos out of Malacanang (actually kidnapped by US agents).

All the while, the Chief Justice has relatively been keeping his cool. Though when the articles of impeachment were filed early December last year he declared his resolve to fight it out with the President, only in reaction to President Aquino’s speaking campaign in campuses did CJ Corona speak out his thoughts that were a veritable reprise of the Dreyden words quoted above and expressed similarly by other thinkers like Sophocles who said, "When divine power plans evil for a man, it first injures his mind." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow put it quite simply, “Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad."

            CJ Corona put it even simpler, “Higit na makabubuti kung ilalabas ninyo, Ginoong Pangulo, ang inyong…psychological records na matagal ng isyu.  Mayroon po tayong obligasyon na ipakita sa taong-bayan na maayos ang ating pagiisip. (It would be better if you could disclose, Mr. President, your…psychological records which have long been an issue. We have an obligation to show to the people that we are of sound mind.”

            President Aquino embarked on a celebration of the 26^th Anniversary of the so-called EDSA Revolt with measly hundreds followers, made up mainly of captive local government employees. God had so mentally damaged him perchance that he failed to realize that after two decades and a half, the lives of the great majority of the people have remained miserable as ever. It is against this reality of people’s misery that the romance of the so-called people power revolution must crumble and along with its demise the shattering of false gods and fake heroes, like some Ninoy once upon a time and a Cory not so long ago.

              Too bad for the President, events that had come to pass in the nation's life just no longer augur for another Aquino to rise to the pedestal of what in Iglesia Ni Cristo  is derided as "diyus-diyosan".

            Three days after the President’s failed spectacle, the Iglesia ni Cristo held a rally at the Luneta. It was staggering. Millions (by fair estimate of the Manila Bulletin, two million attendance) filled every square foot of the grounds from the Quirino Grandstand on the Manila Bay side to the Taft Avenue eastward, the United Nations Avenue southward, and the Intramuros area northward.

            Of course, the mammoth gathering was called a Bible Exposition by its organizers. But as the INC is wont to assert, the words of God are “made secret in mystery”. That mystery is revealed only to the deserving.

            Now the political arena is abuzz with rumors that the President is about to be ousted. The Chief Executive himself began those rumors when he talked about the ouster plot at the anniversary of the Presidential Security Command.

            Indeed, God must have made President Aquino so mad that he must now deserve destruction.   

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