Coffee joke

(The Freeman) Updated July 27, 2011 12:00 AM

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The best laugh of the SONA afternoon came when President Aquino put Pagcor on the spot by disclosing how the state gaming agency spent more than a billion pesos on coffee alone. By making a joke out of it, the president reduced to laughing matter what was otherwise serious stuff.

“Where did all that coffee go?,” the president said in Tagalog. “Who drank it? Maybe we can find the people who consumed all that coffee and ask if they have been able to get some sleep all this time,” he joked. And the audience went wild.

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But that was it. After cracking the joke, the president quickly moved on to other topics. He didn't say whether heads at Pagcor would roll or whether the matter would even be investigated at all.

The beauty of a good joke is that one need not go into the details. For as long as the audience gets its good laugh, the teller of the joke can always trail off mumbling to the next item, just like how Jay Leno does it so expertly. But that is as far as good jokes go.

A billion pesos for coffee, on the other hand, is no laughing matter, even if it does sound funny in all its sordidness. But by skipping the details and treating it as a big joke, we will never know if the coffee item mentioned in the SONA is for real and needs to be addressed.

For example, the president did not mention the period of time covered by the staggering expense for coffee. Did it cover a whole year or for a much longer period? And was the coffee for Pagcor employees alone or did it involve consumption by guests and clients? How about donations?

You see, there was a need to put things into proper context that the president just did not do. If the details pointed to wanton excesses by Pagcor officials, then he should have said so and announced the measures he has taken, in keeping with the theme of his SONA.

But by skipping the details, the message that came across was that the president meant the matter to be no more than a joke. And if the undisclosed details would show everything to be above board, then that was a cruel joke indeed that the president played at Pagcor's expense.