"Sniff-and trust me"
Wear oxytocin for perfume, Mrs. President, and say
By Conrado I. Generoso
Sorry, Mrs. President, but "sorry" isn't good enough, especially if it is half-hearted, is but a lame excuse, and comes late in the day--long after you and your attack dogs have, as is your wont, labeled this shameful episode in your political life as just another conspiratorial plot to unseat you; called those who asked for your explanation destabilizers, power-grabbers, liars; and threatened to haul to prison any citizen who would listen to your wiretapped conversations, or distribute copies of the tapes or CDs, or air the contents, or print the transcripts.
Ferdinand Marcos could not have played out the script any better. Contrary to what you said at one point in this whole sordid affair, it isn't Ninoy Aquino with whom you can compare yourself. Everyday, you have been showing us more of the man your father hated than the one he would have wanted to succeed him.
In admitting having phoned "a Comelec official," as you put it, your excuse was that, "I was anxious to protect my votes…My intent was not to influence the outcome of the election, and it did not."
I thought it was your friend Bill Clinton I heard saying, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman!"
(Who else do you call whenever you're anxious--especially about corruption--Mrs. President?)
Only a few days earlier, you had declared, "I did not cheat!"
Well, Richard Nixon, at the height of the Watergate scandal, also proclaimed, "I'm not a crook!"
A "lapse in judgment?"
How cavalierly you dismiss a matter as se-rious as violating the independence of a constitutional body, putting under pressure an official you appointed and made to swear before you to honestly count the votes, conspiring to rig election results (if portions of the tapes played on radio and television are to be believed), betraying public trust?
A "lapse in judgment?" Clinton admitted committing one when he asked Monica Lewinski to give him a…you know what.
Even in making an apology, you managed to dish out more half-truths, you tried to get away from it all--at makaisa uli. You could not even be candid enough to name the official you called.
But you were right about having lost the people's trust--except that you seem to be still at a loss as to why and how. I can name two reasons: Unbridled and brazen corruption. Lies told, repeated, and still being repeated. This list is long, Ma'am.
And if you think you can regain the trust with a simple "I'm sorry,"
baka sakali, as my lola often admonished us when she wanted us to know for certain we could not get what we asked her for,
pag-puti ng uwak, pag-itim ng tagak.
What you need is not legal and political advice, Mrs. President. You need medical advice so you may understand the effects of paranoia, delusion, and schizophrenia. You need medical advice to help you deal with your "anxiety" so you won't have to call "a Comelec official" when it attacks. And you need medical advice to regain public trust.
Swiss scientists may yet hold the solution to your dilemma, Mrs. President.
Just recently, the Agence France-Presse reported results of a Swiss research showing that a natural hormone called oxytocin is also a "trust drug" that dramatically lowers the threshold of suspicion. The researchers believe oxytocin acts like a cerebral switch, which turns on neural networks that govern emotions, particularly those of trust and social attachment. In a placebo-controlled experiment, they found that among individuals given a single nasal inhalation of oxytocin, 45 percent showed "maximal trust level" to a "trustee-partner" in a real-life money game in which one was an "investor" and the other a "trustee." That's twice the rate among those who sniffed a placebo.
Wear oxytocin for perfume, Mrs. President. If the Swiss scientists' findings hold true, you may yet instantly get 45 percent of the people who sniff you to trust you--"maximally," as the study showed.
But then you have to change your "Strong Republic" to "Sniff--and trust me."
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