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Manila Bulletin devider Opinion devider Compelling

Compelling

Published Sep 29, 2023 04:08 pm

MEDIUM RARE

Jullie Y. Daza

Which television footage did you find more compelling? The airport worker who swallowed dollar bills to hide the theft? Or the baby-faced leader of the allegedly cult-like Socorro Bayanihan Services appearing before the Senate in a state of bewilderment for his 15 minutes of fame?


Those images of the week are what make television so much more compelling than print media’s ability to describe and photograph.


A pity TV reporters did not give us the name of that hungry, thirsty worker of the Office for Transportation Security under the airport authority. While she is being investigated, we can only hope that her bizarre act of swallowing US$300, presumably three bills with a face value of one hundred dollars each, has not caused her any indigestion. Good for her, she was smart enough to pick US dollars from a departing passenger; otherwise she’d have to swallow 17 pieces of one thousand pesos denomination plus one ₱100 bill to cough up ₱17,100, the equivalent of $300 (at the exchange rate of ₱57 to one dollar).


To hide her crime, why didn’t she simply, painlessly dispose of the bills in a trash can somewhere? What, and let some other person reward himself with the fruit of her labor? Just as bizarre as her choice of food for the soul was her superior’s comment that to avoid similar crimes in the future, OTS personnel should get a raise in pay. Remember then President Duterte’s order doubling the salaries of policemen, which did not stop the scalawags from scalawagging?


From watching the lady’s magic swallowing act, TV viewers switched to a ringside view of the 22-year-old “Senior Aguila,” leader of 5,000 followers who believe his god-like progeny as the Santo Niño, baby fat, chubby cheeks and all. If the testimonies of former members of Socorro Bayanihan are to be believed, followers are not allowed to go to school, likely because the leader himself did not attend college. Followers are not to ask why, they do as they’re told.  


What charisma does the leader possess? Senators who tried to squeeze out the mystery behind his persona were so frustrated they cited him in contempt, hoping that isolation in their holding room will loosen his tongue and reveal his secrets. Will he? 

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