CONFUSED

(Today's Editorial of Mindanao Daily Mirror - with friendly permission of my publisher and editor-in-chief 'Tita" Marietta Siongco.)

What is with us?

We pretend to defend decency in public office, yet we condone abominations like a midnight appointment. We mouth motherhood statements about the blight of corruption, yet we whine about bold measures aimed at weeding out the crooks. We purport allegiance to the Constitution, yet we use, nay misuse, the same sacred instrument to compromise earnest efforts to better our society. We say one thing, yet mean another.

This sums up our pathetic national discourse over the last months. For how explain the rank inanities favoring such a widely discredited figure aas Chief Justice Renato Corona? What must we make for the throng that lapped up his street language late last week, clinging to his post as if he were the High Court itself, and taking the President, no less, to task as a -take note- dictator?

How else explain the public statements of such bodies and individuals like the IBP (which cavalierly invoked the constitutional principle of separation of powers, as if any of those institutional powers were beyond criticism), Sen. Joker Arroyo (who, not unlike, of all people, Sen. Bongbong Marcos, critized the Chief's Justice's impeachment at the House), former Sen. Nene Pimentel (who said he wasn't happy with the swift impeachment process), and confessed GMA friend Fr. Eliseo Mercado (Mindanao's very own peace advocate who painfully noted that Gloria Arroyo was being "demonized as if she were the personification of evil.")

Are we missing something?

... .

We're a confused people - unworthy of, or desperate for, principled, modern leadership.