Though the heavens fall

It's been the rising refrain of some friends in media, academia and the coffeeshop crowd - mostly somewhat to my left - to insist (and, I believe, reasonably so) that there is nothing fundamentally different between BBM and Sara, between the families and factions of the ruling class they represent, and between their lust for power and money.

- JOSE DALISAY

Therefore, the correct call to the people in this situation, regardless of the consequences, can only be “Down with both of them! BBM and Sara, resign!” Those Latinate lawyers had a term for it: “fiat justitia, ruat caelum” — let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.

For the plotters of a recently rumored coup, the heavens falling would have meant the replacement of both Marcos and Duterte with a 30-person junta that would include, as juntas go, retired military generals, civilian leaders and a couple of clergymen. (What, no writers and artists? Thumbs down!) That plot was dead even before it got off the ground, and perhaps thankfully so - a 30-person junta already sounds worse than a 24-person Senate, and something in me resists the idea of having Catholic priests (or Protestant pastors or Muslim imams, etc.) in any kind of executive capacity in government.

Yes, the people are marching in the streets and are in the mood for the public execution of their plunderers. Our trust and confidence in our leaders have been so badly abused and misplaced that we are now drowning in cynicism and disbelief, certain only in the fact that we are being stolen from by someone, somewhere, somehow.

Nevertheless I sense no great appetite for a revolutionary regime change that will only unsettle things even more. If anything, what we want is certainty and predictability — that the law will be applied and take its course, that the wrongdoers will be identified, prosecuted and punished, and that proper and ample restitution will be made for their crimes, so that we can all move along as a reasonably functioning society.