Not Masked — Only Unpunished: We Know Who the Culprits Are

By Vincent R. Pozon

It has become difficult to watch

This is the suspense of a Hitchcock film: the audience knows what is happening while the actors pretend otherwise. In The Birds, the murderous crows gather one by one, alighting silently behind the actress on the jungle gym; she waits outside the school, unaware. The camera cuts back and forth—Melanie lights a cigarette, oblivious—while behind her the number of birds multiplies. We see the birds, and we are in agony. Suspense, after all, is the agony of foreknowledge.

It is surreal: the entire country sees the plunderers burrowing into positions of finger-pointing and whataboutism. Their Maginot line is never confess—as they do all that can distract and waylay.

The choreography is simple: outrage performed, alliances rearranged, guilt denied through the sheer noise of accusation.

We know what they are hiding. We hear the yet unsaid—what will probably never be said formally. There will be no full confessions, only feints and misdirection.

The crimes are like crocodiles: only the eyes are above the water, but the behemoths beneath are immense.

Immense as in billions.

Their children know the guilt firsthand. They do not merely suspect; they live with it. They know their parents are architects of plunder. They avoid going to classes; they are quiet at the dinner table.

Truth has a pulse; it strains to break through the skin of deceit. So we see it in the faces of the culprits, for they are politicians, not actors, and their performances are graceless. They are too loud, too rehearsed, and too many words are spent on self-defense.

We see the Rolexes and Rolls Royces, the Birkins and Bentleys, the yachts and mansions.

There are receipts—proponent, conduit, contractor, the dates—all there, neatly typed, incontrovertible. Cases match in cost to the peso.

There are enough laws against corruption, but these people humph at rules and laws. They are not embarrassed. They rely on the fact that all the furor—the marches in the streets, the talk on podcasts, the clamor online—will never convict them.

They believe this to be but bad publicity, an inconvenient episode in their political lives, an embarrassment suffered only by their children.

We see the birds gathering, the shadows lengthening. We see the guilty walking about, vociferous on television, and we shake our heads, wondering how these people can be so unnaturally terrible.

We see the crows.

There is no mystery left to solve. From the President himself to the man whose home was swallowed by the floods, everyone knows who the blackhearted are. They are not hiding. The documents exist. The transfers are recorded. The sudden fortunes — all traceable, all visible.

The law is not blind; it simply refuses to look.

Hitchcock called it the “bomb under the table.” We see the bomb, and we know it will go off—perhaps soon, perhaps not soon enough.

Vincent R. Pozon

After a year of college, Koyang entered advertising, and there he stayed for half a century, in various agencies, multinational and local. He is known for aberrant strategic successes (e.g., Clusivol’s ‘Bawal Magkasakit’, Promil’s ‘The Gifted Child’, RiteMED’s ‘May RiteMED ba nito?', VP Binay's 'Ganito Kami sa Makati', JV Ejercito's 'The Good One', Akbayan's 'Pag Mahal Mo, Akbayan Mo')). He is chairman of Estima, an ad agency dedicated to helping local industrialists, causes and candidates.

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