He rushed in and took a long time to get out
Oh, shit! They're dropping like flies! But I swear, I absolutely had nothing to do with it.
Former DepEd secretary Bro. Andrew Gonzales, FSC bought the farm the other day. His last wave came just a few months after Raul Roco. In my years as the Alliance of Concerned Teachers' mouthpiece, those two had been my sworn enemies. No, not personally. It was just clash of differing standpoints. (ACT was still trying to purchase some footing back when Ricardo "Tsaang Gubat" Gloria was secretary, so no real sword crossing with him back in '97. Edilberto "DJ in the hawz" de Jesus was more of Tonchi's rival than mine. But before Roco, Gonzales was it for me.)
Paano ba naman, in our first ever dialogue with him in his office, among a group of no more than seven seated around his receiving area, Bro. Andrew slept right through it! It was around 1:30 in the afternoon and we knew it was his siesta time. Pero kahit na, I thought then. Someone who could sleep through heart-rending laments of leaky classroom roofs, unpaid benefits and tubercular students must be Captain Ironheart himself.
But being soft-spoken and a La Sallite brother at that, we had to be careful around him. Lay religious e. Mahirap na. We could not shoot haphazardly, our guns ablaze with choice verbal ammo. But one cannot be a good secretary in the eyes of the establishment while upholding the interests of the students and teachers, right?
It was under Bro Andrew that all these hullabaloo about the change in the basic education curriculum started. His Honorable "Wersh-Wersh" wanted all the Pinoy kids to speak the colonial master's language as well as he did. What to do? Hack big chunks from the class hours allotted to Filipino, Social Sciences and Values and feed it to the English Language dog, he said. (People Power II intervened. So Gonzales, who stuck it out with Sherap near the very end, failed to see it through.)
Bro. Andrew was probably among the few respected officials in the criminal-laden Estrada cabinet. To cover up for his apparent ineptitude, Sherap peopled some line agencies with highly-regarded names in their respective circles. Hindi ko nga maubos maisip why Bro. Andrew agreed to be Sherap's main man at the education portfolio, but he did. He did not see through the charade that he was just being used to prop up Sherap's sagging eyebags, este, reputation.
When the charges of corruption, drunkenness and womanizing were starting to stick to Erap like glue, Bro. Andrew remained untarnished. But this ethical man had a slip once--a costly mistake that some journalists said marked the end of the Estrada regime. His office bought a lumbering Ford Expedition from funds donated by the Land Bank to buy computers for some schools. (Only five percent of all public school teachers at that time had ready access to the internet.)
And we bit his head off.
For someone who probably has no personal agenda (only a class-based one perhaps), a mere window dressing to project that Estrada could work with men of probity, Gonzales unwittingly provided us some ammo to show the people that Erap's regime is not as "makamasa" as it claimed to be. An SUV-riding education secretary when teachers are hardly paid their salaries? When schoolchildren had no books from which to learn? It was so patently stupid that I could not hardly believe it when he still stood up to defend his decision. He challenged us to a debate and we obliged. ACT came out smelling like Ilang-Ilang and he smelled like a tail-pipe afterwards.
And the rest is history, so they say.
In 2003, Gonzales came out with a book narrating his nearly three years as education secretary--forgot its title; something about the number of days warming the seat. I am sure, had he been asked on his deathbed whether he would have still accepted the job knowing what eventually transpired, I think he might have said no.
In a government such as ours (GMA or Sherap, pareho lang naman), the cabinet is a virtual snakepit. Clueless persons like Bro. Andrew really had no chance.
Ika nga, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
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