About Ping
The Man Behind the Relentless Warrior
By: Dra. Minguita Padilla
Part VI: The Relentless Warrior
Who can possibly forget the surreal Senate hearings involving Joc Joc Bolante, the alleged mastermind of the infamous fertilizer scam that diverted hundreds of millions of pesos intended for fertilizers to line pockets of politicians for the 2004 national elections?
It was December 2008, and doctors always knew whenever Joc Joc was testifying or had just testified, because there was suddenly an increase in patients consulting for elevated blood pressure, headaches, chest pain, and other symptoms that generally come after hours of exasperation that would inevitably come from watching the Senate hearings then. There wasn’t a single thinking and sane Filipino who believed that Joc Joc was telling the truth. Yet there he was, keeping a straight face throughout the hearings and trying to look every bit the innocent and wide eyed victim as he continued to insult everyone’s intelligence with his incredulous claims.
At one point during the hearings, an obviously tired Senator Ping Lacson, frustrated at the inconsistent untruths coming from Joc Joc; asked him: “Mr. Bolante, lahat tayo ay tatanda. Isang araw, kapag pareho na tayong nakaupo sa tumba-tumba; at maalala natin ang araw na ito, ano kaya ang maiisip at mararamdaman mo? Napag-isipan mo na ba ito?” (“Mr. Bolante, all of us will grow old. One day, when you and I will both be in our rocking chairs, and we look back on this day, what will you think and feel then? Have you thought about this?)
This poignant question was met with just more of the same wide eyed, “deer in the headlight look.” At which point Senator Lacson just gave up asking him anymore questions for the day.
When Ping Lacson asked Joc Joc Bolante that question, he wasn’t just trying to be cute or funny. He meant it.
He is at that point in his life when he can’t help but think of the day when he will retire from the battle field, sit on his rocking chair and look back at today, and on the many yesterdays that he has yet to live. And when that day finally comes, he does not ever want to look back with regret. And so he fights on.
But when things are unusually bad; when the weight of the world seems to be straddled on his shoulder; when the corrupt seem to have the perennial upper hand; and when the people for whom he continues to stick out his neck and fight, seem to remain indifferent, the rocking chair can be very inviting.
It is not easy being Ping Lacson. It is a constant struggle. And this is a gross understatement.
When he met with his prospective Senate staff members after he won his first term in May, 2001, he told them quite bluntly that if they were joining his team in order to get their share of commissions and bribes from his pork barrel entitlements, they should consider rushing to the door and immediately disappearing. He told them that if and when he used his “pork”, he would never entertain the thought of making money out of the “privileges and perks” that go with it.
He tried to use his pork barrel during his first year in the Senate. He thought that he could overcome the corruption that inextricably went with the pork barrel system. But no sooner had he identified projects to fund when two of his staff members started going around Mindanao where they approached contractors for the project, and extorted money from them. Senator Lacson found out, immediately fired them and filed graft charges against them before the Ombudsman.
He has not taken his pork barrel funds ever since; choosing instead to return the same amount to the National Treasury. This refusal of the yearly 200 Million peso pork barrel has been one of the hallmarks of his career as a legislator.
Some years ago there was a cabinet secretary who was facing confirmation and was likewise pushing for approval of his department’s budget before the plenary. Mr. Secretary sent his runners to offer senators 5 million pesos each for ghost deliveries of farm inputs and implements. The deal they were offering was that of the 5 million, 3.5 million pesos was to be taken by the Senator while 1.5 million pesos would go back to the department. The only thing each senator had to do was affix his or her signature on a pro forma letter-request. After getting hold of the pro forma letter, Senator Lacson took the floor of the Senate and exposed the shenanigan while looking straight at obviously shaken fellow senators who had taken the offer.
These are but some of the many anecdotes about Ping Lacson. Anyone who still thinks that he is a traditional or typical politician had better think again. He is anything but traditional. He takes his advocacy against corruption very seriously, even if it means being the fly in the ointment in the lives of some of his colleagues, the odd man out; a lonely figure in a quixotic quest.
During one lively open forum following a speech Ping Lacson delivered, someone in the audience asked: “How do you keep going amidst all the corruption around you? What keeps you from giving up when sometimes you seem to be fighting your battles all by yourself?” He answered: “The trust of people; the knowledge that there are still those who believe in me and in what I stand for; these keep me strong, these keep me going.” And he meant it.
In many ways Ping Lacson is an ordinary guy. He enjoys good food, sweet deserts, beautiful women, love songs, traveling to nice places, elegant clothes, fast cars, fishing, joking around with friends, surfing the web, down-loading music, playing with his grandchildren and tinkering with his I-phone. But in many ways, this ordinary guy is unlike anyone else you will ever meet.
He is a man who has seen a lot of evil and suffering and yet continues to believe in the inherent goodness of human beings. He is a man with a strength and inner peace that can only come from having lived through the darkest night of the soul. He is a man with a clear vision of what our country needs in order to emerge from its present despair. He is man on a mission to do what he must, to achieve the vision. He is a man with a destiny to fulfill.
And so the relentless warrior must continue to fight his battles and walk his road less travelled. But he knows that his are battles that cannot be fought alone. He hopes to find more and more kindred souls along the way, who will fight and walk alongside him towards a collective goal; a nation with a good government and a people who can wake up each day with dignity and hope.
The rocking chair will have to wait.
About the Author:
Ma. Dominga “Minguita” Padilla, MD; is a practicing ophthalmologist and president of both the Eye Bank Foundation of the Philippines and the Drug Abuse Research foundation. Her socio-political commentaries and medical articles have seen publication in many major Philippine Newspapers. She is particularly thrilled at the fact that her essay on institutionalized corruption in the Philippines is featured in the history book “State and Society in the Philippines” (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005). She describes herself as a healer, an advocate, a catalyst, and a writer.