Spooked

Nora Soriño .

ILIGAN City — We share with you today some quotes and/or jokes during these times when we troop to memorial parks to visit and remember our dear departed. Meaning, we no longer are spooked very much. Only a little.

“If you can’t visit them, just text 666 and they will be the ones to do the visiting instead of you.”

And there’s a quote  from the movie “Hard to Kill” starring Steven Seagal, that tall good-looking cop, Mason Storm whose family was slaughtered. This is in the course of an info which he stumbled upon whereby a corrupt politician made a deal with the mob.

Storm survived the slaughter and went into a coma for seven years and then he woke up, and remembered.

Spooked by the memory of his once happy family life when the corrupt politician and cohorts pounced on him and his  family, he was on the revenge mode. As all revenge movies are, he got his sweet revenge towards the movie’s end and viewers in one scene are made to see this quote written  on a mirror of the cop’s subject for revenge in which a red lipstick was used: “The anticipation of death is worse than death itself.”

That was politics in America, during the ’80s through the ’90s. And maybe, that’s kind of  true today still.

Today, too, in our political scene, there’s Juan Ponce Enrile. At 94, some people say, he’s already in the ah, well, “departure area.”

But he’s not troubled by that. He’s still healthy and still possess the mental prowess, he adds. And in fact, he’s running for senator.

Again.

Why?

Because he’s spooked not by his own physical condition. Or his age. Or anything concerning him. By the looks of it,  he’s not even spooked by what they say about him, as the “administrator of martial law” then, during Ferdinand Marcos’ presidency.

From what I gathered, he’s very spooked, okay, very worried and afraid by all this moves of this present government as the nation journeys towards  another life called “federalism.” This is the result of his in-depth study of what this thing called federalism is about, he says. That’s what his in-depth study revealed.

He adds the transitory provisions scares the life of him no end. In that scheme, Enrile says, the nation is being ruled in the meantime by an 11-man team headed by President Duterte. This team, he says has all the powers of the presidency, the judiciary and the legislative all rolled into one. And there’s no specific provision as to who’s in charge if something happens to the President.

That’s why he runs as senator in the 2019 elections because he’s scared. He can articulate better his thoughts in the senate, he says.

Maybe this is just a ploy to get some votes. But I’ve got great respect for people who study.

As the nation journeys towards another life called federalism as it is dead set on doing this, the nation is placed in a very vulnerable situation, he stresses.

The guy has a very good reason to get spooked in that case.

And we should be, too!