The Black & White Movement
29 August 2007

ACQUIRED NARCISSISM

In a recent story reported on CNN about an American senator busted for lewd behavior, the reporter coined the term “acquired narcissism” to explain how people in high places find it easy to behave in bizarre ways, as if their stature entitled them the license to do what they please, believing they operate under different rules because of that stature.

We are tempted to use this description in regard to the actions of some of our leading political personalities. Take, for instance, the purported actions of some government officials connected to the ZTE deal. Did the “Comelec official” mentioned in Jarius Bondoc’s recent column (ZTE deal conceived in hotel ‘sexcapades’, Philippine Star) think that his alleged trips to China, ostensibly to broker the ZTE deal, would go unnoticed and unreported? Did this official think that the mantle of protection offered by his position would be enough to render him “invisible” to scrutiny?

Does DOTC Secretary Leandro Mendoza think that the charges being leveled against him by Rep. Carlos Padilla in regard to the ZTE deal will go the way most cases go in this country – nowhere?

The answer to these questions is, of course, yes. Absolutely. The ZTE deal, like all the issues bedeviling the administration, will not go away. Not least because the more they try to confuse the issue, the more that the public zeroes in on official wrongdoing.

To be sure, many people in the present and past governments have been behaving with impunity for years. As if it was their right to act without fear of penalty, raid our coffers and subvert our institutions without a care in the world. Elected and appointed officials seem concerned mainly with enriching themselves, not serving the people.

The “Comelec official” should have been busy working on giving us the honest and orderly elections we deserve, not running around China receiving dubious hospitality while brokering shady deals. The DOTC Secretary should have been immersed in improving our telecommunications networks with our benefit in mind, not his, if the allegations against him are true.

Slowly but surely, people have been working to combat that culture of official impunity, this “acquired narcissism”. And so there is hope – through the writing of Jarius Bondoc and other journalists, the arrogance of some officials to bamboozle us via the ZTE deal has been brought to light. Through the actions of Rep. Padilla, we may get some relief.

The Black & White Movement lauds the actions being taken to uncover the elusive truth we have been seeking. We need to lift the veil of obfuscation, to clear our vision of smoke and mirrors. Only then will we be able to find resolution to these, and many other, important issues that this government wishes to keep obscured from view.