Noynoying – the Philippine president lends his name to the Filipino Condition

March 19, 2012
By benign0

The term may be new but the observations go way back. The term “Noynoying” is a new buzzword that hit home run and stuck. Philippine President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III after all is the no-results president — the President who so early in his stint in office had already been criticised for his slack work ethic and pakitang-tao (all for show) executive style. Indeed, the only thing about Noynoying that is really remarkable is how such a sticky term only now came to be embraced by a public long jaded by the rapidly fading “Laban” campaign rhetoric of the Aquino-Cojuangco feudal clan that rules the country today.

Credit for coining and popularising the term Noynoying is claimed by leftist militant group Anakbayan who last Thursday the 16th March used this form of “protest” in their mass action against rising fuel prices…

[...] members of Anakbayan introduced a new form of protest act last Thursday called “Noynoying.”

“Noynoying is the new planking: upo lang walang gagawin kundi papogi at tamad-tamaran,” [Vencer Crisostomo, Anakbayan national chair] said.

[Tagalog quote translated: "just sit around and do nothing other than try to look good while being lazy"]

It was only a matter of time before Noynoy would come to personify the fundamental collective character of a people who have for so long failed to demonstrate any ability to take control of and be personally responsible for their own fortunes. Noynoying is now symbolised by the hilata pose, which one assumes by half-lying on one’s back, head resting on a hand propped up by one’s forearm. Indeed, what can be a more fitting symbolic stance for the leader of the Filipino people?

It is the position that Filipino folk hero Juan Tamad (John the Lazy) also takes. As such, even in this stroke of viral achievement, Noynoy is not original as the story of Juan Tamad goes way back — a Filipino icon ingrained in lore for almost a hundred years. Juan Tamad is a character in Philippine folklore noteworthy for extreme laziness. He is usually portrayed as a child, although in some interpretations, he is said to be a young man. Arguably, the Juan Tamad story most often told illustrates his utmost laziness to the point of stupidity that it becomes comedic. In it, Juan Tamad comes upon a guava tree bearing ripe fruit. Being too slothful to climb the tree and take the fruits, he instead decides to lie beneath the tree and let gravity do its work. There he remained, waiting for the fruit to fall into his gaping mouth.

So quintessentially Filipino is Juan Tamad that our logo, that of Get Real Philippines itself, owes its conceptual roots to Juan. But we may actually be witnessing today a changing of the guard. The year 2012 may be the year we see Juan Tamad bow out of the role of Filipino quintessence and Philippine President Noynoy Aquino take his place as the embodiment of the Filipino Condition. Indeed, to slap the Noynoying label on the popularly-elected president without considering the character of the voters who elected him does not paint the full picture of what Noynoying really means to allFilipinos. For Noynoying is a condition that afflicts not just the President of this sad republic. It is one that describes the people he governs and, as he and his mob continuously insist, from which he derives his “power” and “mandate”.

Thus fitting it is, that the popular President lends his name to a notion that so easily captures the essence of what it means to be Filipino. Noynoy Aquino can now legitimately call himself the leader of the Filipino people. It takes one to know one after all. It is quite easy to imagine a president who campaigned on a pedigree platform lying around looking to the heavens for guidance as it is to imagine an entire nation of people looking upwards with gaping mouths waiting for their “hero” to produce for them some “results”. What exactly those “results” Filipinos now expect of their president perhaps should have been something they made more specific to themselves and to their candidate at the time they cast their votes.

[NB: Photo courtesy Showbiz Government. Parts of this article were lifted from the Wikipedia.org article “Juan Tamad” in a manner compliant to the terms stipulated in the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License that governs usage of content made available in this site.]