MANILA, Philippines—Why do so many people want to become National Artists, even if they aren’t worthy of the country’s top artistic honors?

Well, that’s the way of all flesh, flash and concupiscence. So, every three years or so, as the next search for National Artists looms, scores and scores of great artists, lousy artists and even non-artists do whatever they can to get into the short list, and even the long list, of the new round of deliberations initiated by the CCP and the NCCA.

Prospects

In a perfect universe, all self-respecting artists would simply wait for the process to run its proper course, without lifting a finger to influence it in relation to their own prospects—confident in the process’ objectivity, thoroughness and competence in awarding the supreme honor to the best and most deserving artists in the land.

But, in the real world, the deserving are sometimes passed up, and the undeserving with the strongest connections occasionally win out. —And, when all else fails, a determined few even blithely bypass the voting process completely, and get Malacañang to fast-track their self-serving bids.

This, not so incidentally, really ticks off the artists involved in the selection process, because it subverts all their efforts to be objective, and introduces politics into what should be a purely artistic endeavor.

Now you know why so many artists are down on politicians in general and Malacañang in particular—which makes you wonder: Why would the Palace and its inhabitants risk offending so many artists just to make a favored few ecstatic?

Back to the process: You know that it’s currently in play again when you read so many books and articles about so many “deserving” bets. Now, some of these plugging gambits are OK, because they provide important information that would otherwise not be available, especially to the ultimate decision-makers at the CCP and NCCA.

Others, however, are way off the mark, because they blithely ignore the basic standards for making sure the awards go to the best artists.

First, the key honor should be awarded to the best practicing artists, not to the best art teachers or organizers. Next, the awardees should have come up with consistently exceptional work, not just a few occasional successes.

There are other standards, but these two are key—and, ironically, they’re also the ones that are most often flouted by all of the self-promoters out there.

Sadly, they’ve turned out to be more successful that they should be. When the National Artist awards were first handed out, the general feeling was that the awardees were deserving.

Decades later, however, self-promoters and their backers (who have vested interests of their own) have, in our perception, diluted the honor’s value—to such an extent that, with the “help” of Malacañang, fully one-third of the awardees have not been all that deserving.

That’s a serious lapse, and we trust that the people currently in charge of the selection process do their utmost to be constantly cognizant of the process’ flaws, and work hard to eliminate or at least minimize them.

Vigilant

The right way is simplicity itself: Leading artists and reviewers in each field pretty much know who its outstanding practitioners are. These are the practitioners who should be short-listed, while the less deserving ones should dream of winning other if lesser honors.

This not being the case, however, people who want to redeem the National Artist awards should be vigilant against determined bids to water them down further, for all sorts of self-serving reasons.

Why is this important? Simply because the awards set standards that the public in general and young artists in particular should aspire to measure up to. If mediocre artists are honored, what would there be to truly aspire to?

Stature

Second, deserving National Artists should be “defended” against the interlopers, because if more undeserving artists joined their ranks, everyone’s stature would be diminished.

This is a crying shame, because being an artist in this country is often difficult and thankless, so the National Artist award should be the nation’s way of expressing gratitude to the few truly great artists we have, for sacrificing so much for their art and audience.