Full Moon at Sunrise        Rex JMA Fernandez

I feel apprehensive.

The President is getting all the applause for all the Erap jokes.  No thanks to him, although we must give credit where it’s due.  For whatever the president does he gets the people smiling amused or just plain laughing.

But then this is healthy for the country.  There is medicine.  Without the laughter, there will be too much unhealth in the country, considering the high level of stress and its consequent pathological ramifications due to how we live in the Philippines, which is living dangerously.

No, I am not talking about vive la vida loca.   That is for the unwinding.

The jokes we’re having, although they can elicit laughter as any joke does, hit us also in the head amazing us no end and getting that tick of apprehension somewhere down at the rearest part of your head.

Where in the world do you have rats paroled?  If this is not in the Philippines, bad manner of fact (pronounced: maner’o f-k) would have been skewered, butt and brain included.

It’s not only in the Philippines who are laughing with, by and at the President.  Just consider, people trusting their money to people who would not like to be checked and get away with it.

Then, a former justice and a nun are kicked out of a government gambling agency for placing the money at the stakes of people’s health and not betting on the requests of the President, First Lady and Congress people.

I also become apprehensive when the word “you” becomes third person plural bearing arms and is placed immediately after the letter “r” in the word rumor or after the letter “o” in the word coup.

Who would not be, when loyalty checks are made not between lovers or employees but amongst the military?

The President really likes to make a joke about our finances, our livelihood and our lives.

Oil prices are increased and they say there is no inflation when even the Supreme Court has increased recently fees for filing of cases.  Oil prices are increased and the poor suffering the brunt of the increases, are not given increases in their wages and salaries and are told to suffer for a while.

I really love this guy.  He could stand all the jokes about him but not from that Inquirer.

He knows how to keep his friends happy, including girlfriends, his relatives and his children who, because of their happiness, end up quarreling with each other.

See how people love him that now they are blaming each other for why they voted for him on that fateful election day of 1998.

I really do not know what joke would the Philippines have tomorrow, or the next day or next week. It might be on Danding Cojuanco having all the money from the coconut levy.  Or Imelda giving thanks to the President for paying for what she should have been paying to the victims of her husband’s megalomania.

I would just like to remember the joke to the Philippines that Erap gave.

No it’s not about the signal light, nor of being naked going out and remembering that he forgot to put on his wristband.  No, it’s not.

It is he.  Ecce homo.*
 

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