Relationale: Conversations with Culture Changers

Asian Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities 3.1 (2013): 147–163 Relationale: Conversations with Culture Changers Manuel Quezon, III Interviewer: As I’ve said, the interview is about culture and arts and humanities. Culture in the presidency, the [attitude towards culture] of the [previous] presidency, and of this current presidency. Because you did work in museums before, you must be the best person [to ask]. Usec. Manolo: Yes, I’ve worked for two presidents. There’s a bit of a difference, of course. I’ve also, in both jobs, been exposed to [the government’s] cultural agencies as well. They have their issues, many remain the same and many change. So, yes, there is that contrast. I suppose the interesting thing is really the ability of any chief executive to have to really define the direction, not only [of] the government, but those working in the government. And even the eventual decision of what to concentrate on is profoundly influenced [by the president], but not necessarily by any sort of policy direction set by the president, or whoever the president may be. Simply—in many ways, there’s a lot that is done in government and this is picked up in media and by the population at large in a kind of osmosis. What the president feels interested in or not interested in gets magnified all across the government. I’ll give you concrete cases in point. In the case of GMA [former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo], for example, her approach was in many ways a very conscious restoration of the pre-Martial Law system. At least initially, in her own mind, having been there [and] lived there as a girl in the background of her parents. The story in terms of Malacañang before that had been the attempt of [Ferdinand and Imelda] Marcos to recreate it in their own image, starting with their decision to basically demolish the Palace in 1978. Interviewer: Really? Usec. Manolo: Yes. Essentially, Malacañang is about 80% new. So [Mala- cañang] was a physical recreation of the official space which [the Marcoses] made also their personal space. And the contrast to that was Cory Aqui- no’s complete distaste for it, which is why she refused to live there, right, and why, for much of her administration, it was turned into a museum for teaching the excesses of Martial Law. [Then there were] the efforts under [Fidel] Ramos to gradually try to reclaim the Palace as both office and residence, to [Joseph] Estrada’s sort of first step which was partial residence—he lived in the Guest House not in the Palace itself; to GMA’s decision to be the first president since Marcos to actually live there. 147 Manuel Quezon, III, “Relationale: Conversations with Culture Changers” And then much of her focus was very, very Third Republic, in living in the family quarters, restoring the Palace as much as possible, including many of the pre-Martial Law parts of it, reclaiming the old furniture, that sort of thing. That was a very conscious approach. She was the first one to hold the Rigodon in the Palace since 1981, which was the Inaugural. It was a very conscious decision, but the end result of that was a kind of full circle in that the [present] president, when he was elected, returned to the ambivalent and, in many ways, hostile attitude towards the Palace. It took a while to convince him to even move out of Times Street. Interviewer: Noynoy [current president Benigno Aquino III]? Usec. Manolo: Yes. And then he was finally convinced that it simply would make it a lot easier for everyone, including security. Interviewer: Yes, because he wanted to stay in Times Street. Usec. Manolo: In Times Street, yes. And it’s his decision to live in [Bahay Pangarap, which separate from the palace but is still part of Malacañang grounds]. Which, again, keeps the Palace at a certain arms’ length, which he feels is necessary if you are to maintain a kind of objectivity about the job. In contrast to, let’s say, GMA’s stay, which [saw it as] really part of the whole thing, that you’re expected to live there and try to have a family life there. Interviewer: So [GMA’s] conception was that the Palace was the proper setting for the president. I mean, that’s where she’s supposed to live… Usec. Manolo: Yes, in keeping with the long line from her father and all his predecessors. Interviewer: Yes. Usec. Manolo: So it shows you which sort of approach are you adher- ing to. Even then [it] can bring up a whole lot of other things. That even though it was [GMA’s] decision to try to adhere to those long-established traditions—the [current] president now represents a different tradition altogether which is sort of ambivalent… Interviewer: Of course, that is culture, right, where the president lives is definitely already the kernel of our culture. Is that a kind of [political] message—what definition of political culture that the presidency is com- municating? Usec. Manolo: Yes, it suggests a theory that I put forward to students when I talk to them, which is everything is political. Interviewer: Yes. Usec. Manolo: There is no real clear demarcation of where the political ends and where pure culture begins. We are also a very politically-attuned culture to begin with. [This] is why many Filipinos take cues from our leaders. Basically, what is permissible and what is taboo is demonstrated 148 Asian Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities 3.1 (2013): 147–163 by the behavior of their officials. Well, for example, when the president made his decision on the wang-wang1, that was a cultural statement as much as it was a political [one]. It represents what sort of view of [society the president has]. Previous presidents would have justified your [use of] wang- wang as we are a hierarchical culture, we are a culture that values and gives deference, versus we are a culture with egalitarian sort of aspirations. And which is why the wang-wang was very interesting [in] that sense because it was really a clash of cultures. I think there were many Filipinos scandalized by it simply because, my God, it turns the well-ordered way of things on its head, versus a sort of a modernizing attitude, that those sort of things are cake and really counterproductive. And again, it’s an announcement, it’s a choice. It cascades and starts having repercussions. Interviewer: So you say it’s a choice. So, therefore, was it conscious? Is it like a conscious cultural choice? Usec. Manolo: Yes. And again it points to the mindset that the occupant brings to the office. Much of the contrast [is] explained [by the] place of ritual in all of this. A president—a supreme arbiter, in many ways, of taste, and as the authority that will dictate protocol and in all its many manifestations—has a choice of which past [traditions] they will bring [to the office]. All of this is based on an appeal to authority, basically. The president as arbiter of taste and arbiter of protocol is because they are [part] of the long line of previous heads of state, [the] personification [of] the country and all of that. Interviewer: A question I always wanted to ask whenever I see [these things] on TV—is this like you, because you’re the historian, the resident historian? Or is this like a kind of a conscious decision of the administration? In other words, is it you reading or—? Usec. Manolo: It is part[ly] all three. That’s a very good question. Your question really boils down to: what is the role of any sort of intellectual, a public intellectual or an academic intellectual, in a political administration? That role has always been, in many ways, like a lawyer’s. A lawyer will find, depending on their level of personal scruples and that of the president they serve, the justifications for the policy that is envisioned. In the case of culture and all of these other aspects of it, whether it is our policy for the office in cultural agencies, or the tone and direction an administration takes. [First,] it depends on the personal inclinations 1A kind of siren for private cars used by supposed VIPs to part traffic. President Aquino banned their use during his first year in office. 149 Manuel Quezon, III, “Relationale: Conversations with Culture Changers” of the president himself. Second, [it depends] on those that the president chooses to take advice from. And third, [it depends] on the ability of those giving advice, to give advice that is both, for lack of a better word, doable and which will have the intended benefits. So if, for example, a president takes, like GMA, [an] approach that—and this is again just sort of ingrained simply because of the circumstances under which she grew—that it is very important to adhere to the culture of the Third Republic with all that it represents, then she will naturally take advice that is geared towards the importance of that culture and what it represents, that approach. Interviewer: Which is in line with her branding as a “Strong Republic,” et cetera. Usec. Manolo: No, because that’s actually where it becomes complicated. This is strictly my opinion at this point. In the very beginning [of the GMA administration], there was an immediate sort of dichotomy there. There was a need to sort of undertake the reforms borne of the EDSA Dos circumstances which was modernized, actually shaking institutions to their foundations.

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