In Mar vs Alfred, Mar lost—and P-Noy, too

By Al S. Mendoza

MAR Roxas bit the bait and that was it.  He got ditched.

I refer to the gripe of Alfred Romualdez, the mayor of Tacloban City.

Alfred went to Congress and let his hair down, deploring what he said was the unconcern of the national government to the plight of his city and his constituents in Yolanda’s aftermath.

Of course, Alfred was exaggerating, if not indulging outright in politicking.

He is a Romualdez in the first place, and a Yolanda victim in the second place.

As a Romualdez, he has a built-in disadvantage.

Or was it advantage?

Alfred is the nephew of Imelda Marcos, the wife of the late, unlamented dictator Marcos.

Everybody knows it was Marcos who imprisoned Ninoy, P-Noy’s father, for more than seven years during Marcos’s Martial Law years from 1972 to 1986.

Bad blood continues to boil between the Aquinos and the Marcoses.  Include the Romualdezes.

That’s how it has been in Philippine politics.  It will be that way today.  Tomorrow.

Mar aggravated matters when, in a meeting with Alfred after Yolanda’s fury, he told Alfred:  “Remember, you are a Romualdez and the President is an Aquino…”

Jose Mari Gonzales, the former movie actor whose daughter is Alfred’s wife, had put that episode on YouTube and it has gone viral since.

Mar tried to explain the incident by saying his statement was taken out of context.

But his explanation would pin him down all the more.

Always, in a confrontation between the big and the small, people would tend to side with the underdog.

And the underdog here happens to be Alfred since Mar, being the super-powerful Interior secretary and one of P-Noy’s most trusted factotums, is the nation’s top gun in the rescue operations in Tacloban and its environs.

In a Congress forum, it was expected that Alfred would fire with all guns ablaze.  It is in his blood to fight back, and his sense of timing seemed perfect.

And I don’t know why, I wonder why, Mar would fall prey to a virtual street fight instead of simply saying “I’m sorry, Alfred, if we hadn’t done enough…”

Humility, like prudence, is also the better part of valor.

Admitting that the P-Noy government had been remiss in rescue and relief operations at the start would be a virtue, boon, rather than a bane.

We are not super men here, we are simply men that have limits.

Mar had simply too much ego and pride that he just couldn’t show even a tinge of compassion at a time when passions ran high and tempers could be flying from all directions.

In short, Mar had said so many things that would make him sorry in the end, uttered so many words that would mean nothing in the end.

All he had to do, all he had to say, to win the word war was, “Alfred, I am sorry we goofed.”

No more, no less.

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