CECILE GUIDOTE Alvarez as Juana Loca meets the ghost of Rolando S. Tinio as Caligula.

Caligula: The good news, Juana, is that you?re the new National Artist for Theater.

Juana goes happily loca, but seeing the rather grave demeanor of the shade of Tinio?s Caligula, stops herself and asks: So what?s the bad news?

Caligula: The bad news is that the National Artist award has lost its credibility.

Caligula strips and reclines a la Desnudo. Juana does a Sisa and wins the Famas.

The story is apocryphal, but there?s nothing apocryphal nor exaggerated about the general feeling among the arts and culture community that the death knell has been sounded on the National Artist awards institution.

The reason: President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, in what critics call as a brazen abuse of presidential power, has dropped composer Ramon Santos from those elected by the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and instead proclaimed four persons, including Alvarez, her own adviser for culture and the arts, and ?massacre? filmmaker and ?komiks? writer Carlo Caparas, as National Artists.

?Brazen,? said National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera.

?Appalling,? said National Artist for Theater Design Salvador Bernal.

?What?s really galling is why Caparas was named National Artist,? National Artist for Literature F. Sionil José fumed. ?I walked out of his films?

?Iyan ang sinasabi ko,? José continued. ?We don?t have a strong critical tradition. Lumalabas na palakasan iyang National Artist award.?

But CCP officials said the rigid selection process is really meant to check ?palakasan? and politicization of the awards.

Last Friday, perhaps the biggest gathering of angry artists gathered at the CCP ramp to hold a symbolic necrological service for ?the death of the National Artist awards.?

Nearly all of the living National Artists were there ? at least all the artists who had passed the selection process.

Aside from José, Bernal and Lumbera, putting a black rose on the funeral wreath were National Artists Arturo Luz, Benedicto Cabrera and Napoleon Abueva (visual arts), Virgilio Almario (literature) and Eddie Romero (film).

Celeste Legaspi, daughter of the late National Artist Cesar Legaspi (visual arts), read a poem by Vim Nadera that had been adapted from ?Kung Tuyo na ang Luha mo, Aking Bayan? by the late National Artist Amado Hernandez. A relative stood in for the late National Artist Leandro Locsin (architecture), builder of the CCP.

Almario read a mock prayer with the chorus in black gown:
?Buddha, Allah, Ama Namin:
Ito pong Pambansang Sining
Iligtas sa pekeng lider,
Panday Pera, Sinungaling.?

In his remarks, Lumbera expressed fear that the unprecedented move of Ms Arroyo to drop Santos from the official list endorsed by the joint NCCA-CCP board and the proclamation of four National Artists who did not pass the process ? the biggest number in the history of the awards ? has damaged severely the award so that it may altogether lose its credibility.

?Puro pamumulitika na lamang ang magiging batayan ng matatawag pa kayang karangalan,? he said.

Later, the National Artists symbolically entombed their own National Artist medallions to signify that the honor has lost its luster because of the presidential proclamations of dubious National Artists whose only qualification to the honor is their political connection.

The symbolic funeral wreath was later delivered by a protest motorcade to the NCCA office in Intramuros.

The wreath was specifically meant for Alvarez, who was supposed to be disqualified from the award because she is NCCA executive director, and for Vilma Labrador, NCCA chair and, as it turns out, member of the Malacañang ?honors committee? that supposedly screened the CCP-NCCA list and recommended the dropping of Santos and the proclamation of Alvarez and Caparas.

Protesters called Labrador and Alvarez ?traitors? for not standing up to the choices made by the NCCA-CCP selection. They have also called on the two to resign.

Joining the protest were CCP officials such as Emily Abrera, Nes Jardin, Bal Endriga, Behn Cervantes and Fernando Josef, and Intramuros Administration chief Bambi Harper.

Others in the protest: Gil Portes, Armida Siguion-Reyna, Ramon Orlina, Rissa Hontiveros-Baraquel, Silvana Diaz, Illac Diaz, Romy Vitug, Nap Jamir, Krip Yuson, Abdon Balde, Bart Guingona, Susan Fetalvero-Roces, Gilda Cordero-Fernando, Deanna Ongpin, Imee and Irene Marcos, Renato Lucas, Marian Pastor Roces and many others.