Featured Post

MABUHAY PRRD!

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Outpouring of grief for Jesse Robredo’s passing challenges the Yellow brand for the first time in 30 years

August 27, 2012

As we now know, Filipinos gave a rousing farewell to a fallen bureaucrat, the late Secretary Jesse Robredo. Robredo was remarkable because he represented the ideal Filipino government official — one who does his workproperly. In the Philippine setting, that makes Robredo a “hero”, because he supposedly walked the straight path long before his boss made the phrase a political tagline. Perhaps then that is the kernel around which the song-and-dance over Robredo’s death is being orchestrated by Malacañang — because Robredo was living — now dead — proof that the Philippines did not need Philippine President Benigno Simeon “BS” Aquino III to swoop in and invent “good governance” for us. It was right under our noses all along.

[Photo courtesy Trust.org.]

The tragedy with being a quiet achiever, however, is that quiet achievers aren’t good showbiz. There are no blockbuster Tagalog movies about wise town planners who inisted that new developments be built on highr ground. Instead, Philippine cinema is dominated by cocky maong-jacket-clad, agimat-toting gunslingers out to rescue ordinary folk from their wretchedness.

That is where the brand equity of President BS Aquino and his clan lies — in their being perceived as the “heroes” who will save the Philippines from bad governance. Unfortunately for them, Robredo’s death and the massive public expression of grief from ordinary people have, for the first time, outshone BS Aquino’s cherished Yellow political brand. While the Yellow shine even back in the time of former President Cory Aquino’s death had been backed and preceded by the media mileage provided by ABS-CBN et al, the rallying around Robredo’s memory came out of nowhere — from a deeper place outside of the radars of many political observers.

Indeed, Robredo’s death and the massive broad-based mourning that followed is preceded by only two other genuinely spontaneous shows of mass sentiment — the assassination of BS Aquino’s father Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr and the 1986 EDSA “Revolution”. It is in both of these crucibles that the Yellow brand was forged. And with the infrastructure of mass hypnosis implemented by the oligarchy since then, the Yellow brand has become the de facto default umbrella symbol for any Filipino “fight”.

Robredo’s death challenges that almost three-decade-old idea which began in 1983 — that Filipinos can have any kind of laban for “reform” as long as it comes in the preferred shade of Yellow. You can see today the efforts of the Malacañang spin machine desperately trying to envelop the occasion in its preferred yellow shade. Trouble is, this time the colour simply wouldn’t stick. It just keeps washing off.

Perhaps it is because the grief amongst people that Robredo personally anddirectly touched (which are not necessarily the ones who hardly knew him yet sing praises to him with the loudest voices) comes from a more meaningful place and not from the politically-coloured or publicity-fueled motivators that characterise Philippine society’s traditional “opinion-shapers”. True Robredo fans don’t care who Robredo worked for or what he “symbolises”. To their colour-blind eyes, he is just a man who governed with grace.

26 Comments

  • nieves godinez says:

    I am so sick of reading media reports of speeches of praise of all the yellow reps at the palace. Goodness, media practitioners in the country are truly idiotic in the way they carry out their profession. What is wrong with Philippine society??? Politicians are using the media for their political ambitions instead of the media performing their most meaningful calling of making politicians accountable for their governance.

  • Well said,Sir. Last paragraph was really good.

  • joeld says:

    Maybe its not them trying to paint it in the shade of yellow? Maybe trying to make sure about something….hands-on search and rescue by BSA immediately after the crash? Something I cant quite put my finger on…..or maybe its just me.

    • ahehe says:

      Showing robredo was present on EDSA 1.

      Insisting Nepalese student piloted the plane/was “found” on the pilot seat.

      Robredo child wanting to do a Kris Aquino.

      No, joeld. It’s not just you.

  • Felipe says:

    Unfortunately, it is the loud underachiever or non-achiever running the country right now, not the “quiet achiever” which the country direly needs but somehow manages to ignore until it’s too late.

  • FallenAngel says:

    I like this one Benigs.

    Felipe,
    Empty cans rattle the loudest?

  • Jmac says:

    The Philippine media shaping society’s perception and vice versa. It is certainly true that those who hardly knew him, if at all, are the loudest ones in terms of joining the yellow bandwagon of heaping praise on Robredo.

    It’s just like every other puerile bandwagon or trend in this country. The country has little sense of authenticity. Ride the bandwagon and raise one’s hands up high as high as one can and position oneself in the trajectory of most visibility as best as one can, for as long as the trend is still hot. Like parishioners at the end of every Sunday mass who position themselves in the trajectory of greatest vulnerability to the sprinkling of holy water, those who sing praises to him hope to get a share of some of that ‘holiness’ or a feeling of some kind of redemption from their own desperation.

    And it is certainly true that those who knew him personally are the real, authentic ones in dispensing praise upon the man, who to them was just a good man who did his job really well, not just some sort of “symbol” to associate themselves with and derive gratification (similar to what characterizes much of Christian religion especially in this country).

    Pity the country that desperately needs heroes.

No comments: