The queen of Da King shows how to govern

A congressman said that the similarity and the difference were equally striking. The Ninoy Aquino funeral was redolent with the fragrance of soap and perfume that even clouds of incense at Santo Domingo could not overwhelm. Indeed, the procathedral was packed at the time but not yet with the perfumed set. Call the multitudes at the Ninoy Aquino funeral the great lower middle class -- educated, professional and underpaid or unemployed -- but they were not the perfumed set. They were nonetheless legion. They were the economic backbone of the nation. And they had turned out, all clean and fresh in their Sunday best, that day of the great funeral that buried a dictatorship. And all because, as one of them told a government TV camera crew, “We’re here because someone loved us enough to die for us.” Those words were really said. “The Filipino is worth dying for,” Ninoy said, and did just that for them. The rich no sooner saw this tremendous outpouring of outrage and grief than they wised up and swam like lemmings in the direction the people had blazed.

The congressman was right, however, about the difference. No sooner did you open the door last week at Santo Domingo than the smell of sweat, of piss, of weariness and despair slapped you in the face: the odor of poverty and privation. But the crowd this time was out of this world: monumental, gargantuan, nearly unprecedented. At least two million lined the streets from Santo Domingo Church to the North Cemetery, half a million escorted the coffin in their midst. Some say as many as four million turned out yesterday to bring “Da King” to his final resting place.

Whether or not the political opposition will be able to turn this phenomenon into a real political advantage, one thing was clear: the people out in the streets were very different from the people who had been out there in 1983 or even in 1986. They resembled the people who had massed before the Palace to be shot like birds on Labor Day 2001 but many, many, many, many times over in numbers.

Yesterday, the opposition found itself, certainly not at the head, but surely in the midst of an army or an electorate of some two to four million strong. And it was clear that the widow Susan Roces leads this army or can dispose of these votes as she showed, with icy composure and a near-perfect timing and control such as only Filipino movie producers and directors operating under a tight schedule and a limited budget seem capable. Certainly we had here none of the “burara” of your typical big businessman who starts out with a big and expensive bang, only to fall flat on his face at the public’s expense. Consider how this widow, and her husband’s network of support -- her and her husband’s friends of many decades, along with newfound friends in politics -- pulled off with near-clockwork precision the schedule she had set, given the many possibilities of disruption from a crowd so huge, so angry, so volatile, so malleable to provocateurs; or the interminable and unavoidable delay in bringing the body of the beloved over five jampacked kilometers to the cemetery of the masses. It would have been impossible to restrain them at the gates, as in fact happened, yet mercifully without any stampede or serious incident.

They said the doors of Santo Domingo Church would have to be closed to public viewing by 8 p.m. Tuesday, and this was done, in the teeth of so many thousands more who were still in line to file past his coffin, many crying on TV that they had come from far away. But it had to be done, and despite the nonstop jostling outside the massive wooden doors, her schedule was respected. Susan and those who helped her plan Da King’s final journey set necrological services to be finished before 2 a.m., to make time for the requiem Mass which in turn needed to be finished by 3:30 a.m., because the funeral cortege had to be off by 4 a.m. Despite the endless crying and eulogies of emotionally incontinent people, the schedule was kept. They said he would have to be buried by 10 a.m. At that time, as the sun started to bear down hotly on the La Loma crowd, the amazing Susan Roces, though visibly tired, still kept her composure, breaking down only once, over her husband’s coffin, for a final kiss before it was inserted in the cold gray tomb. A few minutes of sobbing in daughter Mary Grace’s arms, and both women were off, waving wanly to the crowd as the car drove away.

She would have wished to tarry but must have known she could not have a quiet moment with him then. And to stay much longer could only encourage the crowd to feed on its anger and grief, ever more susceptible to violent suggestion.

For some minutes people jostled to put flowers at his tomb, to pray, to cry, while angry groups kept chanting “FPJ!” and the usual political spiels. But in the end, the “evolving conspiracy” that a tired old man at the Department of Justice had warned against did not materialize. And all because the one person who lost the most from FPJ’s passing had made the right call at every turn and showed how to govern the ungovernable.

Earlier, in response to the eulogies, Susan Roces encouraged her showbiz colleagues to pick up Da King’s efforts to revive the dying movie industry, even as she vowed to keep his political advocacies alive.

The clockwork efficiency in which her schedule was kept, considering the potential disruptions, should shame those who still look down on “mere actors.” Hearing how FPJ, his wife, and the big actors like Dolphy who followed them became independent producers so they could have more creative room, one is jolted to realize that here is -- or perhaps was -- one vital economic sector. They produce, they create jobs and, in FPJ’s case, provide social security even unto death. And they meet deadlines and borrow and pay debts as few big-mouth businessmen do. They are a legitimate and valuable economic sector, and their economic activity just happens to be producing stuff that is fun rather than painful like the imaginary electricity of the oddly VAT-free independent power producers.

That they mostly entertain is no reason to look down on them, for, on second thought, the commercially successful so-called serious media borrow heavily from the movies to turn news into “infotainment.”

If there is one enduring lesson to be learned from this giant of a man, it must be this: it is time to look at this sector as truly an industry -- dying from inordinate taxes, lack of government help and piracy -- and its biggest names as captains of the same. FPJ helped build it up and tried to keep it going up to his death. He wasn’t “just making movies” but taking on the presidential work of creating jobs and security. This was art making it possible for people to live.

TODAY was a Philippine news daily broadsheet. It ceased publication in 2004.

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