Tatak Pinoy: Humor, miseries and other paradoxes By MAR-VIC CAGURANGAN For Saipan Tribune

MANILA–Two Thursdays ago, CNN dropped its regular program to give way to breaking news from Manila. A Philippine Airlines Airbus was being hijacked by a man brandishing a grenade and a firearm. The entire nation was gripped already with anxiety by nonstop fighting in Mindanao and bombings in its capital region. And this hijacker must be an Abu Sayyaf bandit out to snatch another batch of hostages, everyone thought. For the first few hours, the world followed the unfolding drama.

Then came the bizarre twist. The man wasn’t a terrorist; he was a disturbed man with an upset stomach. After demanding money from the passengers, he bailed out using a funny-looking homemade parachute.

After delivering the news, the CNN anchorwoman went back on camera with a sheepish smile that seemed to say, “There you go folks, another bizarre episode in Manila.”

That was one afternoon when Filipinos were bombarded on the airwaves with the word “parachute.” Before the odd hijacker parachuted out of the plane, Press Secretary Ricardo Puno criticized the Time writer who strung together the various accounts for the cover story on President Estrada for engaging in “parachute journalism.”

And when we thought we had heard the most surreal of events. Earlier, before the PAL hijacking, Imelda Marcos had expressed interest to be the chief government negotiator with the Abu Sayyaf, holding 21 hostages.
Even as three foreign undersecretaries from Europe were calling on the President and the Department of Foreign Affairs, offering help in the Sulu hostage crisis.

What, Imelda wants to give the ambassadors a run for their money?! Editors in the newsroom cracked up laughing.

The PAL hijacking, the disastrous Time magazine cover story on President Estrada, and Imelda’s latest theatrics all came on the heels of the Love Bug virus that sent the whole world crazy, the Sipadan-Sulu hostage crisis and the bombings of city malls and airport. These made Filipinos blurt out a collective, “Hay, naku, we’re gonna look like shit again.”

We’ve had enough bizarre developments in one day to worry about other things. But in a country that is used to bizarre happenings and where people have developed into a fine art the laughing off of miseries, the right resort is, inevitably, to humor. Something goes well with the trusty Pinoy humor, an ability to fantasize. Must be the reason why we love electing actors to public office? Well, where humor and the surreal met, the escapist element was provided by those pictures of a young Erap Estrada carousing with his leading ladies in his old movies.

We can’t blame outsiders if Filipinos are portrayed “inaccurately.” Especially when Imelda Marcos and the Abu Sayyaf can surface in a race that produces a Lea Salonga or a Ninoy Aquino. The same race that unleashed the most destructive computer virus can also develop the antidote. We brave missionaries who shielded hundreds of civilians in East Timor, but we also have scum like the Abu Sayyaf.

To outsiders, nothing, it seems, is real here. Parang chute lang.

But if the former Commonwealth president Manuel L. Quezon were still alive, he’d shrug his shoulders and say: So what? It’s better to have a place run like hell by Filipinos than one run like heaven by anybody else.

At any rate, no one can beat the Filipinos’ resiliency and ability to survive. We’ve survived earthquakes, typhoons, coup d’etats, elections and yes, governments.