I wondered that recently as I waited for President Benigno Aquino III in Mission Dolores Church, the very church I attended as a boy growing up in San Francisco’s Mission District.
The Basilica, as the church is called, seemed much smaller than I remembered. As an 11-year-old, to me, the domed ceiling seemed huge. Now it seemed barely large enough to contain the egos of statewide community leaders, local elected officials, and the high spirits of a few hundred select Filipino Americans. They all wanted to do the most important thing you can do with the president of the Philippines: Pray.
Realistically, when you’re an overseas Filipino, besides sending back billions of dollars in remittances, what’s the next best thing that you can do for your bedraggled ancestral homeland and its new leader?
And when he comes into town, what do you really want to hear from him? Aquino can recite all the platitudes about rooting out corruption and cleaning up the Philippines to Filipino American benefactors. But in the end, nothing quite moves the credibility meter like seeing the leader genuflect at mass, stand for the gospel, and say amen. OK, it’s nothing as dramatic as seeing Imelda on her knees at St.Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, but you get the picture.
Seeing a president at mass at least assures us that if he really screws up, in the end, we do have the eternal recourse option.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going Jerry Falwell and Moral Majority on anyone. But the Filipino culture is deeply religious. We put it aside when it comes to considering policies and what’s right for a society. But we can come right up to the line. In the end, faith has to count for something.
When you’re thousands of miles away, barking at the headlines might work. But prayer may be just as effective.
So, of all the events on the West Coast, the only must attend event for me was the afternoon mass that Sunday for Noynoy, P-noy, whatever you’d like to call him.
Frankly, by now the whole nicknaming thing is getting to be a tad annoying. It’s like his handlers are trying to create a new processed cheese made of part-Cory, part-Ninoy, and part the other guy. Too bad Aquino is a Trois and not a Deux, then we could settle it all by calling him Jun.
It would fit with how handlers like to position him. On this trip, the message to Filipinos here was “Look, manong, I’m just an Average Joe.” That is to say , not a dictator, a general, a movie star, or a loud tiny gal in a red dress. (Although the red dress would have made a splash in San Francisco).
Aquino’s the kind that eats at In-N-Out, and stays at the Sofitel, not the Waldorf. Not exactly sleeping on a banig in a Motel 6. But here’s a regular kind of guy, the kind who comes to America and gets lost in a crowd of Filipinos at mass.
There’s some good to be had with that approach. The problem is the Philippines’ troubles require the talent, strength, and vision of a super-human to fix. A regular guy could be overmatched. Just as a current documentary suggests that US public schools need Superman, the Philippines is no different.
The RP doesn’t need mild-mannered Clark Kent. So maybe we’re just waiting for Noynoy to find a telephone booth?
In the age of cell phones, it may take longer.
It’s just the first hundred days. Let us pray.
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