One of the things I hate about sleeping over in my sister's dormitory room is that I miss the news. I developed a habit of watching the news when as a high school sophomore, my high school Asian history teacher would give a pop quiz on current events in almost a weekly basis. Since the latest single at the top of the MTV Charts was not considered current events, I would almost always be assured of landing a zero (or a 1 or 2 if I'm lucky) during such pop quizzes that I finally decided it was time to read the other parts of the newspaper aside from the Entertainment and Comics sections as well as regularly tune in to "The World Tonight" before I go to sleep.
Two days ago, I was helping my sister with her homework while trying to tabulate the results of a survey I was doing for my thesis. I forgot to turn on the radio and listen to the simulcast of the 6 o'clock news. I ended up missing something very important.
When I called my mom in the morning, she said to me "Haydee Yorac is dead." My still half-asleep brain suddenly came alive, the zombie-like neurons sparking with life at the mention of the name. All I managed to muster was an "Ahay," complete with my trademark Ilonggo cadence, perhaps one of my few commonalities with the late government icon.
Losing someone like Haydee Yorac would definitely elicit some sort of reaction similar to mine - a drooping head, downcast eyes, a grim mouth, all punctuated with a heavy sigh, as if losing someone or something of dire importance. Yes, losing Haydee Yorac was like dropping a prized samurai to a precipice of infinity, saying goodbye to the sword whose razor sharpness could easily cut through the diaphonous fabric of lies which deceptively strangle the government and the bureaucracy into absolute paralysis.
I was 11 when I first knew about Haydee Yorac. I remember I was in the airport to fetch two cousins who came for a visit. One of them went up to my mom and breathlessly told her that they were in the same flight as Haydee Yorac. My mother excitedly reacted to the news while I sat in the backseat of the car, trying to shake my head like a glass paperweight, the type with the white flaky things swirling in the middle. Finally I got the courage to interrupt their conversation and asked "Who's Haydee Yorac?" The three of them turned to me as if I had committed the gravest sin in the world, enough to land me in the pits of hell with Judas, Cassius and Brutus (if Dante were to be believed). My cousin said "You don't know Haydee Yorac?" That's what happens when you're 11 years old and all you watch is MTV and Cartoon Network. I shook my head and my mother was about to launch into her whole narration of Yorac's past and achievements when my cousin said "There she is!" I poked my head out of the car and shifted my glance to the mass of heads swirling about near the airport entrance. I saw a woman dressed in purple with big, curly hair in the middle of the crowd with sunglasses over her eyes. That was the only time I had seen her in person and I will never ever forget her face - hard and worn, strong, fearless with an air of confidence, but not haughtiness, about her.
In the midst of the chaos and political instability surrounding PGMA's tenure as President of the Philippines, she said that our government has been so besmirched in a swamp of corruption that once you decide to join its ranks, it is fairly difficult to keep yourself clean. I will never forget that since I was eating dinner in Em's house in Laguna and I abandoned my half-eaten plate to hear PGMA quote those overused words from the Bible "Let him who has no sin cast the first stone."
At that time I was consumed by my anger at the audacity of PGMA to attempt to pull the entire bureaucracy with her under the spotlight of allegations that she rigged the 2001 presidential elections that I forgot to mention that someone was actually worthy of casting the first stone smack in GMA's mole. Haydee Yorac's life is proof that there is indeed such a thing as principle, that it is still very much possible to stand up for what you believe in, that right can still prevail in a society which seemingly favors the wrong. She chose to work directly in government of all places, the seat of bedlam and the hive of thieves in the guise of serving society. She was driven by her search for truth and justice and she truly lived up to the name of her title as head of Presidential Commission of Good Government. She was not concerned with minor projects. In fact she dealt with controversial issues such as the Marcos ill-gotten welath and the coconut levy funds and she scored victories with them, never mind the scale. But the point is, she was a true definition of a public servant, one who worked for the good of the people and one who tried to deliver what the government owed the Filipino people. And most of all she refuted the cliched claim "If you cannot lick them, join them." If a government official like her could live up to such rigorous standards of truth and morality, there should be no reason that the President herself cannot do so, especially if she takes to heart her mandate to serve the needs of the Filipino people before anything - and anybody - else.
I told my mom that we are slowly losing good people to the sickle-bearing goth dude. People like Haydee Yorac cannot fight our battles for us for all eternity. In fact, the reason that people like them only seem to go as far as making a small dent or two in the thick metal encasing the enemy is that we ourselves have consented to thinking that the enemy, no matter how evil it is, is the norm and we just have to go ahead and accept that. That is a dangerous precondition which could twist the societal values which govern our daily lives. Evil is never to be accepted; it is always to be shunned and rejected. It is people like Haydee Yorac who have raised the bar and have tried to present us with a new standard to pursue and live by. Skeptics may ridicule this and say this is a dream, not a sense of reality, rather, an illusion.. But Haydee Yorac was a real person and hers was a real life. Is this then not reality?
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