At least one cannot accuse the former chief of the Philippine National Police of being coy.
Senatorial candidate General Ronald dela Rosa does not even try to play down his excitement over the release of his biopic, with popular action star Robin Padilla playing his character.
“Let’s be frank about it,” Dela Rosa said in Filipino during the movie’s press conference held Monday. “This movie will be a big help in propping up my candidacy.”
Giddy that his life and times have been dramatized and would be commercially shown to the public, Dela Rosa even invoked the name of God in his personal saga. “Maybe the Lord has a plan for everyone,” he said.
Over the years we have seen other curious victors in the Senate halls. We are certain it is less God’s handiwork and more a sorry consequence of the way we Filipinos choose our leaders.
Padilla says the movie will show the general’s human side.
Does he mean that we have only thus far seen Dela Rosa’s inhuman side? The general is best known as the first henchman to implement President Duterte’s relentless campaign against illegal drugs. That campaign has been roundly criticized as brutal, arbitrary, anti-poor and dismissive of due process.
If the actor means, instead, that we have only seen Dela Rosa’s no-nonsense side, then he too would be mistaken. From the beginning, the general has had no qualms showing his range of emotions, from bobbing his head up and down at an official function, to playing Santa Claus, to weeping in front of the cameras during a Senate probe. We have also not heard about any significant achievement during his brief stint at the Bureau of Corrections.
While the release of biopics and other propaganda masquerading as culture is nothing new, the brazen attempt rankles anyway. This only validates our collective failure to distinguish between myth and reality—and politicians’ delight in exploiting it. The truth is, Filipinos are still looking for saviors. This has been largely responsible for our protracted discontent with government. But saviors do not exist; what we simply need are fundamentally good and qualified people who can do the job well.
Then again, perhaps Dela Rosa believes he has just truly lucked out. After all, other candidates are themselves working on their campaigns in varying degrees of subtlety. All of them are working around election rules, which the Commission on Elections is too feeble to implement.
Let’s be frank, indeed. For a law enforcer who wants to cross over into being a lawmaker, Dela Rosa certainly does a miserable job at respecting the spirit of the law.”‹
