Imagining better leaders
I might be beating a dead horse and milking an overworked cow, but there are a few things that bear repeating.
The setting: the impeachment hearings for Vice President Sara Duterte. During the proceedings, Quezon City 4th District Rep. Bong Suntay, ostensibly her supporter, spoke in her defense with an analogy that was so faulty, it could have been substituted by any other without losing meaning.
Suntay insisted on announcing how he lusted after Anne Curtis (in Filipino: nag-iinit sa loob) as a way to talk about how harmless words are and how people cannot be condemned for their imagination.
He could have referenced any other situation. To wish for a lot of money by planning to befriend contractors and siphon money out of government contracts. To wish to be able to eat a lot of fatty food without bearing the consequences on health and appearance.
Instead, Suntay chose to remark on how he has lustful desires but chose not to act, and we shouldn’t condemn him for mere thoughts.
It turns out: we can.
After all, his Bible verse-toting allies in the pro-Duterte circuit can quote from the Gospel of Matthew: If a man looks at a woman and lusts after her, then he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
There might not be a law against thoughts, but there are principles to uphold—surely the Duterte supporters agree, or will they once again pick and choose when morals apply, the way they do it for “thou shalt not kill”?
As the online furor built, so did the defense of Suntay, which was perhaps even worse in both tone and meaning. Why wasn’t anyone castigating Curtis, they said, for posing in revealing outfits and wearing skimpy clothes? How could anyone blame a man for lusting after such a woman?
We are hearing, yet again, a woman being blamed for a man’s inability to control himself. That is not to deny anyone’s personal responsibility over how they present themselves—but there, too, is the agency that one has to look away, control their thoughts, and be faithful in all ways to their vows.
We are hearing, yet again, that a woman is responsible for all the actions that will make or break a man’s existence—that instead of raising men to be stronger, of teaching them to be better, of expecting them to be so much more than some paltry bare minimum of existence, we must yet again corral women.
In laying the blame on Curtis, the supporters are telling people that men are so weak that they must be guarded against a woman who dares to exist publicly. The defense is actually saying: Men have no power over themselves.
These supporters should ask themselves whether they should have voted for someone like Suntay into office. How can he manage legislative affairs if he can’t control something as basic as his thoughts?
So much has already been said about this issue, but there was something else that became apparent last Sunday at Mass. Fr. Jun Viray, SJ, our presider at Our Lady of Pentecost Parish, talked about the overwhelming darkness seemingly enveloping the entire world today.
He used the oft-quoted passage from “The Lord of the Rings,” where the wizard Gandalf counsels a despondent Frodo who wishes that the great darkness did not encroach on his beloved Shire, did not come into his life, did not force him to live in such times.
“And so do all who see such times,” Gandalf says, “But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
The passage is more than a call to deal with the difficulties of the present rather than dwell on a past of supposed peace. It is a call to have hope in a humanity that has freedom and agency—a humanity that is strong because it chooses to rise above its tendency to despair, because it chooses not to cave beneath the force of sin, because it chooses to fight against the darkness.
Fr. Viray went on to talk about changing ourselves this Lenten season (and beyond). Shift the focus away, he said, from ourselves and our weaknesses, but also be aware of our own free will and power to face the darkness together.
To expand this reasoning: we must be inspired by those who are able to surmount their supposed weaknesses, who act and speak nobly—who can see the light in each human being even through the darkness cast by the world.
The darkness could be the war around us, but it is also the darkness within us. It might be human to succumb to one’s defects and see nothing but death and emptiness in an already broken world—but it is nobler to rise above, to try, to hope.
That is probably why many of us were so disturbed by Suntay’s remarks. He was tasked to speak about how people could be damaged by what he saw as mere thoughts, how there was no such thing as mere words. He could have taken the higher road, the nobler route. Instead, he chose to make the hearing about him, his thoughts, and his shortcomings, and then expected us all to applaud the whims of humanity at its lowest.
Can we be persecuted for imagining better government officials?
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iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu
