Angelo Reyes: Doing the Unthinkable

Wednesday, 09 February 2011 08:05

Written by Prospero E. De Vera III

I accompanied incoming UP President Fred Pascual to Karen Davila’s top rating program Head Start at the ANC studios yesterday morning. While Karen was asking President Pascual about commercialization of education and the controversies surrounding the search for the new UP Diliman chancellor, people in the newsroom started to get animated as text messages and radio reports started to come in saying that former Chief of Staff Angelo Reyes has been shot and was in the emergency room of the Quirino Hospital.

In between commercial breaks, more discussion on the challenges facing the new UP President, and on-the-spot reports from ABS-CBN reporters, the unthinkable reality started to come out. For reasons that may never be known, Angelo “Angie” Reyes committed suicide while visiting his mother’s grave at the Loyola Memorial Park.

In a country where politicians never lose but are “cheated” during elections, where bureaucrats challenge whistle blowers to “show evidence and file cases in court”, and where a President says “I am sorry” for manipulating the elections but refuses to resign from office, the specter of someone taking his own life while in the midst of a corruption investigation is indeed unthinkable and shocking.

So why did Angelo Reyes commit suicide? How do we make sense of his actions? And what do we do now with the corruption investigations?

Everyone is either at a loss for words, do not know how to act, or have totally divergent views of the unthinkable act.

The House of Representatives passed a resolution of condolence, continued the inquiry into the Garcia plea bargain deal, and then abruptly decided to end its investigation. The Senate suspended its own investigation to “pause in prayer and reflect over (Reyes’) untimely death” but vowed to continue it next week.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo called him a “patriot”, Erap Estrada remembers him as a “good general”, Senator Jinggoy Estrada says he is not to blame for Reyes’ death, and Senator Sonny Trillanes extended his condolences to the family but asserted he wasn’t sorry about the way he treated the former military chief.

But what really surprised me was the trail of comments on my Face book post on Reyes’ unthinkable act. My good friend Sam Pedregosa wanted a closure to this issue and said “Here we go again, if somebody dies innuendos and conjectures follow. Let Reyes die. He did it his way. I hope the others follow his lead.”

Arnel Romero agreed and lauded Reyes’ action as “an honorable way out, at least from a soldier's point of view”. But Cecile Sipin, Timmy Salcedo, and Jun Mocas disagreed and called Reyes a coward for dying without telling the truth, asking for forgiveness, and making restitution. Some even added that he should not even be buried in the Libingan ng Mga Bayani.

So what do we make of all these conflicting statements about a man who had an outstanding military career, served as defense secretary (2001-2003), interior secretary (2004-2006), environment secretary (2006-2007) and energy secretary (2007 up to 2010) before being hailed to the Senate on corruption charges? And how do we judge the act of taking one’s life by public officials?

Since Angelo Reyes’ act was so unthinkable that it shocked everyone into a stupor, maybe we demand that other officials (and not just those being accused in the Senate now) follow Reyes’ unthinkable act so that the patter of actions will help us analyze and reflect better. Only then can we clearly say whether he/she is a “patriot”, “coward”, “good riddance”, or “a great loss to the nation”.