MEDIUM RARE

As President BBM rattled off numbers and figures – up to the trillions! – I wished the producers of his televised State of the Nation Address had the viewing audience in mind: They’re not all 99.9 percent numerate. Two sets of figures that were easiest to absorb had to do with his warning to smugglers and dirty cops. To the former, “Your days are numbered,” by which we inferred that the hoarders and price manipulators behind the sky’s-the-limit cost of imported sugar and onions have 365 days to shape up or ship out. To the policemen, PBBM declared that he would be accepting the resignations of those caught with their hands in the coke and cookie jar. The result was immediate: Hours after the SONA, three generals and 15 colonels turned in their res-ignations. Accepted. (In one operation alone, on Oct. 9, 2022, a Manila police sergeant major was caught with “the biggest haul in history,” 900 kg of shabu worth ₱6.7 billion found in his car. Six other cops were arrested, but it doesn’t look like the story and numbers end there.) The President’s speech was one hour 11 minutes long. It would have been so much more dramatic if the TV cameras had switched now and again to visual aids, including graphics, to show the data – numbers, commas, decimal points, percentages – but that’s one (innumerate) viewer’s opinion.  Earlier in the day, Congressman Sandro Marcos told reporters his father wrote the report and it would take him one hour 20 minutes to deliver it. Orators who write their own stuff cannot help editing their work, to shorten or lengthen. The day after his SONA 2, the President left for a state visit to Malaysia. As expected, not everyone was hap-py, including those who think it’s a joy to pack and unpack (even if you have a Mrs. to do it), jet lag is fun, change of weather and time zones is a fashionista’s holiday, and putting your best foot forward to meet strangers and convince them you’re not an Eskimo selling ice to them is all a game. Who cares that you’ve come for work, in the name of friendly relations and on behalf of 110 million other strangers?