Zarate: From solon to skit director
I am already a senior citizen. And more than half my present age I spent being a professional journalist. But in all my years both as just an ordinary living person and somebody compelled to read a lot on account of my chosen calling, I have never come across a more ridiculous and preposterous story than the one about Carlos Zarate on Inquirer.Net a few days ago.
Carlos Zarate, by the way, is a partylist congressman representing the leftist Bayan Muna. So what was the story that Inquirer.Net saw fit to run online and probably its parent the Inquirer did as well in print? I read and reread the story 44 times and to the very end I remained clueless as to what the story was about.
According to the news item (not having fathomed what the story was about, I will no longer call it as such), an unidentified man on a motorcycle was "spotted" inquiring about Carlos Zarate from a staff member of a group called Hustisya in Quezon City. When told Zarate does not hold office there, the man asked where then. When the staffer said he did not know, the man left. His motorcycle did not have a plate number.
And that is it. That is the entire pertinent gist of the news item Inquirer.Net saw fit to post online. On a given day, the average Filipino living in a fairly large city as Quezon City will probably see at least a thousand men on motorcycles without knowing the identity of even one of them. So an unidentified man on a motorcycle should be no big deal to anyone, least of all a big news organization as the Inquirer in any of its platforms.
An unidentified man on a motorcycle asking about anyone is just as similarly innocuous and commonplace. An unidentified man on a motorcycle asking about anyone could be a mailman, or a courier company guy trying to make a Zalora delivery. Why, it could even be a Grab Food driver with some hot meals ordered by phone.
Carlos Zarate, as mentioned earlier, is a congressman. He is a politician. Politicians live their lives always having unidentified people knocking on their doors for almost anything --for a cup of rice, for free passage home, for paracetamol, for the prize in a basketball tournament, for a speaking engagement in a barangay fiesta.
Is Zarate so obscure and inconsequential he is not inquired about by anyone, whether with a name or not? But I do not think so because Zarate is a noisy fellow who insists on being correct and inserts himself into almost any conversation. A guy of such self-worth should not find surprising being inquired about. In fact, if for nothing else, you are a congressman in the corridors of power, sir, not a jumpy someone in the hinterlands.
Oh, the missing license plates. Ask the LTO, sir, and you will be astounded by the sheer number of plateless motorcycles it will care to admit. But this stupid worthless news item would have stayed stupid and worthless had not, tra la la, Zarate himself not come out toward the end to finally make it all look as truly contrived as it really was. Zarate hinted it could have been a political hit. Ahh, there it is, from the director's mouth. Try again, sir.
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