Things happen
“Things happen” is an English expression meant to comfort oneself or other people, acknowledging that life is full of the unexpected and that we should learn to accept what happens.
In Filipino, the closest would be, “Ganyan ang Buhay”; that’s life, also the title of a song composed and sung by Freddie Aguilar, in turn popularized by the likes of Imelda Papin. You can almost imagine the song accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders, that’s life.
The English “things happen” has many versions, including “that’s life,” but there’s a more vulgar version, “shit happens” preceded by a warning, “You be careful now. Wait till the shit hits the ceiling,” a rather graphic expression. Perhaps that’s why the expression has been toned down to “things happen.”
Lately, it has become a frequently quoted expression from United States President Donald Trump, who used it to scold an American journalist who dared to ask the visiting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about what happened in the case of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist brutally killed in 2018, supposedly at the behest of the Saudi government. American government investigators gave a detailed report about how Khashoggi, who was a vocal critic of the Saudi prince, was tortured and his body dismembered. At the end of 2018, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights released a report holding the Saudi government responsible for the “premeditated extrajudicial execution” of Khashoggi.
Nothing seems to have come out of the case, disappearing from public attention until the Saudi Prince’s recent state visit to the US. The question irritated (enraged?) Trump, who gave an unsolicited defense of the prince with a long explanation that Khashoggi had friends and enemies and ended with “things happen,” meaning “shit happens.” In Filipino, it sounds ever so gentle, “ano ka ba?”—what’s with you? The original English remark has a variation: wait till the shit hits the ceiling. Add an electric fan.
I couldn’t help but think about how in the Philippines, electric fans are operating full speed but quietly. Foremost, of course, is the corruption investigation in the management of public works funds, especially for flood control. Running into trillions of pesos, there is clear anger coming from the public, but I still sense there’s also some degree of “things happen” in it.
It almost seems we’ve come to accept graft and corruption as normal in the Philippines and, more alarmingly, to resign ourselves to our dismal state of affairs as “that’s life,” and “things happen.”
Even more disturbing is the scale of resignations involved, considering the plunder that’s involved. The flood control investigations have been happening right smack in the middle of typhoons and monsoon rains, and hundreds of lives have been taken, with properties and livelihoods destroyed.
We’ve heard promises of justice, including arrests of those involved and threats of long prison sentences, including for the children of the thieves. And yet, we now see front-page headlines about the disappearance of “persons of interest,” at least 17 now on wanted lists. Considering how their photographs have appeared many times over, you wonder how they could have just disappeared.
Always, the blaring “wanted” headlines end up muted, especially as we start hearing different variations of cases with similar tunes. The public works cases were briefly eclipsed by the Alice Guo human trafficking cases; “human trafficking” is just a generic catch-all term for all the crimes committed, from falsification of citizenship to kidnapping and illegal detention.
Again, because of all the publicity involved, faces all over newspapers and television both here and abroad, it becomes more shocking when, over the last weekend, we learn, after heavy sentences were meted out (life imprisonment for Guo), that one of the major, honorable defendants, Cassandra Ong, has been missing.
I’ve been wanting to mention in my column that Ong and Guo, already facing investigation, were once asked to help translate the testimony of Tony Yang, another honorable defendant in the Pharmally case involving funds diverted away from COVID-19. I could not believe my ears when one of the congressional staff had to explain why they did not have someone to translate into Chinese: “Finished contract,” meaning the translator’s contract had not been renewed.
Now that’s double sh*t happening. Shrug of shoulders.
I am certain there’s so much more happening. But I refuse to believe it’s all a normal part of life. Should we just sit back, shrug off our shoulders, and watch history converted into a chronicle of things that just happen?
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michael.tan@inquirer.net
