On Politics, Sort Of

One thing I've always wanted to be is a little more serious-minded.

At 22 I started working at a national newspaper, The Manila Times, working with some journalism greats, like Malu Mangahas, Pete Lacaba, and Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon. Once I co-hosted a TV show, and one of the other hosts was Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, who is now an Akbayan congress representative. To be 100-percent honest about it, I felt just a little bit inadequate around these people and others like them (except for Risa, who is just about the most gracious person you'll ever meet and who couldn't make another person feel inadequate even if she tried). I mean, what have I, a very ordinary girl, to say to such people who dealt in only the VERY IMPORTANT things.

Once at a film showing--I think it was Carlitos Siguion Reyna's Ligaya ang Itawag Mo Sa Akin--I found myself face to face and alone for a few minutes with the newspaper columnist Conrado de Quiros. The situation definitely called for somebody to start a scintillating conversation, but instead I sort of just smiled stupidly and eventually slunk away.

One time I did open my mouth. It was some cocktail event in Greenhills, if memory serves me right, just before the 1998 presidential elections, and I was introduced to one of the candidates, the late Raul Roco.

Gushed I, "I watched you on TV with the other candidates, Sir. I liked you a lot. You seemed to speak the least bullshit!" He chuckled good-naturedly, but I was mentally kicking myself as soon as the words were out of my mouth.

I did try to keep all the political goings-on straight in my head, but there never seemed to be any rhyme nor reason to how these things went in the Philippines, and there was always one upheaval after another, so half the time I felt like I was in a fog of only half understanding.

Since moving to France, where government and politics seem to function systematically, I've been promising myself to be more conscientious about keeping up with national events. But you know what, I think there was a reason my boss at The Manila Times kept giving me such assignments as the profile on child actor Vandolph and the interview with beauty queen Ruffa. I've only really begun regularly checking the news sites and buying the national papers like Libération less than two weeks ago, right about the time I heard that newly elected president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Cécilia were getting a divorce. To put it plainly, all the new activity was triggered by the good old desire for chismis (gossip).