Funny how everything balances out. On the same day that the results of the Random Manual Audit were released – showing that the results of the automated elections were accurate – the Ombudsman issues a directive to the COMELEC to suspend six officials implicated in the ballot secrecy folder mess.
I’m searching for the right metaphor or analogy that can be applied to this situation, and the best I can come up with is Sisyphus. You know the guy.
He used to be the king of Corinth who was pretty smart. One day, Hades – the god of the underworld – showed him a pair of handcuffs. Well, they didn’t call it handcuffs back then, but it was nevertheless a device meant to restrain a person’s wrist. Sisyphus – such an unfortunate thing to be called both a sissy and a puss all in the same breath – quickly determined the usefulness of the restraints and challenged Hades to demonstrate its use. Hades promptly rose to the challenge and ended up cuffing himself.
Sisyphus tossed the god into a closet and for a time, the circle of life was all screwed up. People just couldn’t die and, one imagines, during that time all of Greece must’ve turned into something like zombieland. Only with togas.
Eventually Hades was released, proving once and for all that you can’t keep a powerful guy – even an unutterably stupid one – down. Sisyphus was then told to go into the underworld for his punishment.
Sisyphus, however, had discovered how to game the system. He told his wife to do two things: NOT to bury him and NOT to put a coin under his tongue. Once in the throne room of Hades and his Queen Persephone, Sisyphus unleashed his inner lawyer.
“You can’t keep me here,” one imagines him arguing.
“Why not?” Persephone asks.
“It’s a violation of the Constitution! It’s a politically motivated and Your Majesties,” he gestures to both Persephone and Hades. “You can be impeached!”
Hades rolls his eyes and booms “What violation?”
“Well,” Sisyphus begins, “first of all, I haven’t been buried! I have been denied my Constitutional right to be given funeral rites. And as you must know, unburied dead have the right to have their souls wander the earth.”
“But -” Persephone splutters. Sisyphus holds up his hand and nods sagely.
“Yes, BUT that is not all,” Sisyphus says grievingly. “I wasn’t given a coin to pay the ferryman with. So, my being here is actually working an injustice on Charon the ferryman who was deprived of his right to make a living when I was transported on his boat without payment!”
“Wait a minute -” Hades thunders, half-rising out of his chair.
“And a minute is all I need, your Majesties,” Sisyphus continues. “To remind you that these willful violations of our rights constitutes impeachable offenses. I’m gonna have to tell Zeus about this.”
In short order, Sisyphus was booted out of the Underworld and was able to live out the remainder of his years on earth, gloating about his victory over death and bragging about it to his drinking buddies.
Eventually, however, everyone dies and this time, Sisyphus was all out of clever arguments. Enemies, however, he had a lot of. The lesson here being that if you’re gonna piss someone in power off, better make sure you outlive him.
Getting back to the story ‘tho …
So, Sisyphus finds himself in the Underworld once more, only this time, he’s been buried and had a big coin in his mouth. With no way out, he gets judged and sentenced to hard labor of a particularly frustrating kind. As payment for his offenses against the gods, he gets to roll a boulder up a hill.
Unfortunately for him, the boulder doesn’t like heights and once it’s been pushed up the hill, immediately finds a way to roll back down again. Sisyphus then has to fetch the rolling stone and start pushing it up the hill one more time.
Well, it feels like we’ve been rolling that stone up the hill for. Ever. And when the RMA announcement was made this morning, it was a great feeling. Within hours, though, the stupid rock started rolling back down.
Ah, well.
Times like these, it can be pretty easy to wax philosophical about how the cookie crumbles … so let me be philosophical.
While it is an undeniably unflattering development to have a senior officer of your agency placed under preventive suspension, the fact remains that this proves our claim of being serious about COMELEC transparency.
In essence, this suspension order is us saying “come look! nothing hidden here!” Of course, that’s scant comfort for those whose reputations will be tarnished by these charges, but coming at the whole thing from an institutional point of view gives one a different perspective on things.
Still, like I said, it’s pretty frustrating to be faced with a state of affairs that can only be called a Sisyphean equilibrium – a situation where positive efforts are immediately counter-acted by negative developments.
This hill is looking pretty steep again.