SOMETIME in 1996, our writing mentor and adviser in the school newspaper, Raul S. Gonzalez (Gonza to most of us), posited that if there is a Filipino idiom that best sums up our failure to rise and prosper as a nation, that would be “puede na, puede pa.”
“Name me, show me any defect in the goods we produce, any deficiency in the service we render, any bug in the systems we employ, any blemish in the leaders we choose, any kink in the armor we don, any fly in the ointment we prepare, any flaw in the way we think, comprehend, decide, do—and, believe you me, it can be traced to how easily either of these two phrases—puede na or puede pa—comes to the Pinoy lips and moves the Pinoy mind,” he wrote in his column in the Evening Paper.
He blamed “puede na” as the culprit for the mediocrity that the Filipino has become. He wrote:
“It is what has held us back as a people despite the agility of our mind, its inventiveness, its thrusting nature; despite the bounty and beauty of our land; despite so many good starts, despite the fact that we have always been pathfinders and trailblazers, first in many things—to drive out our colonizers, to gain political independence, to absorb the ways of the West. Puede na it was that which made us stop when, perhaps, another step could have brought us freedom much earlier, given us prosperity much sooner, led us to total victories instead of uneasy truces, demeaning compromises, abject surrenders.
“Pueda na it must have been that forced upon us the choice of the easy quick fix over the sure cure we need to work for and work at; that reduced our reach to only what we can grasp here and now; our high ambitions to low appetites; our genius to craftiness; that blurred for us the distinction between what is shoddy and what is excellent, between what exalts and what degrades. And puede na it is that is keeping us from getting what is due us—a government that is clean and efficient and caring and just; and from becoming what we can be—citizens in a democracy, in the truest sense of those words.”
Puede na, of course, can be translated to mean “passable,” “good enough”—but certainly not the best that you can do or get. In other words, puede na is mediocre, mediocrity.
Wondering, you must be, why I find it relevant to raise this point one generation later.
It’s because I never thought I’d live to see the day when the Senate could become a House of Mediocrity.
Ask any senior citizen or anyone who can wax nostalgic about the kind of Senate and senators we had from the 1930s to its abolition in 1972, or in the first few years after its restoration in 1987. They’d all be sighing in dismay—or disgust.
Tell me, who among the 24 senators, to use another popular Filipino idiom, nasa kalingkingan man lang of the likes of Manuel L. Quezon, Claro M. Recto, Lope K. Santos, Rafael Palma, Jose P. Laurel, Manuel Roxas, Sergio Osmena Sr., Jovito Salonga, Gerry Roxas, Jose W. Diokno, Lorenzo M. Tanada, Carlos P. Garcia, Diosdado Macapagal, Juan Sumulong, Arturo M. Tolentino, Tecla San Andres Ziga, Ambrosio Padilla, Blas Ople, to name some whose names sound familiar to most of us.
Over the past 30 years or so, the quality of the people we elect to government, on the whole—not just the Senate—has been declining election after election. The composition of the Cabinet is no exception.
In Gonza’s words, we have a Senate that is puede na. And worse, puede pa—the recycled politicians and members of political dynasties voters keep electing.
But who can blame the electorate when they hardly have a choice? Because the really good ones, the cream of the crop, simply don’t want to take part in government anymore, concerned that their name would be sullied.
Something’s gotta give if something’s gonna change.
