NEITHER CECILE Guidote-Alvarez nor Carlo Caparas is getting the picture, nor, for that matter, Malacañang, in the brewing National Artists awards controversy.

But, oh well, since when has Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo?s Malacañang truly gotten the picture of what the people are saying?

Let it be stressed, at the outset, that individual voices and groups who have voiced their opposition to Alvarez have not said or have even insinuated any iota of doubt on her own artistic merits in the field of theater. That is not how the discourse runs.

It would appear, however, that her wounded pride has taken the better part of her. A pity for a well-accomplished woman of outstanding mettle whose own struggle against the Marcos dictatorship with her husband Heherson is certainly part of this nation?s saga on the dark days of the dictatorship.

And when all the din of protests shall die down (although that does not seem to be in the offing for the moment), when her own sense of sobriety shall reclaim her, I certainly hope she will be able to live with a National Artist title that was a legal aberration to begin with, bereft of moral responsibility that a government official must abide by the law.

Only the legal viewpoint can save Alvarez, or consign her to the dustbin of history if she so decides at self-destruction. The legal prohibition is crystal clear that even before she gets nominated by anyone, if at all, she is already automatically disqualified from receiving the award.

Her NCCA?s own guideline on the selection process says so: ?NCCA and CCP board members and consultants and NCCA and CCP officers and staff are automatically disqualified from being nominated.?

Let us not even cite the fact that she is also presidential adviser on culture and thus holds Cabinet rank (and herein applies the problem of delicadeza) and is absolutely covered by that prohibition.

Abuse

But for one who has fought the Marcos dictatorship?s abuses, conflicts of interest by the conjugal dictators included, it would now appear Alvarez herself is abusing her position.

Comes now Senator Francis Pangilinan with an even higher layer of legal basis. Pangilinan cites Section 11 of Republic Act 7356 that created the NCCA: ?During his/her term, all members of the Commission shall not be eligible for any grant or such other financial aid from the Commission as an individual.?

The legal prohibitions are as clear as day. And how is Alvarez responding?

When the issue first erupted in the national dailies, Alvarez was recorded to have said: ?Galing lang ?yan sa mga taong may galit sa akin [Those came from people who are angry with me].?

Not only was it the wrong repartee, it simply indicated how the argument on legality was lost on her. The next day, her comments became even more vicious -- and entirely alienated and remote from what were being said of her award: ?Was I an idiot before I was named for this award??

No, she was never one, that we are sure of, but she would be relegated to idiocy if she violates the law. And for that, she only has Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos as her yardsticks.

Contrary to what has been reported in this paper, the current row was not ?indicative of the culture of hatred that is so embedded in our society today.?

Culture is about values. Nor is it about the ?jealous cliques and gangs? of the artists.

In fact, the protestations have extended far and wide across the national geography, including within the very committees in the NCCA where memberships by artists and cultural workers are all national in scope. It is all about the rule of law and restoring our national dignity.

It is all about sustaining the struggle to reject the culture of political rewardism that Heherson and Cecile Alvarez both fought for with great sacrifice on their part and which had brought them once to lonely exile.

Debates over Caparas

By the way, it is the same legal yardstick that must apply to Carlo Caparas, never mind about the quality-quantity debates over his cinematic outputs.

Caparas was nominated but failed to make it after the highly stringent three-stage process. Either he never made it after the first round, which is the level of the Special Research Group composed of commissioned art experts that vet all nominations, or failed to make it to the second round which is the National Artist Award Council of Peers that twice deliberates to shortlist all nominated names from the first screening stage.

One will never find anything in the rules about the much-ballyhooed ?presidential prerogative,? not even in Executive Order 236, the Honors Code that created the Committee on Honors of Malacañang, the gist of which is simply to establish an order of precedence of all civilian honors conferred by the President of the Philippines.

There is absolutely nothing there that authorizes the President to supersede the existing rules of nomination of the NCCA-CCP, which the same executive order does not deny. Like the nebulous Honors Committee, which is chaired by the executive secretary, this so-called presidential prerogative is non-existent. It exists only out of cultural practice.

And it need not be said that of all presidents after Marcos, only Cory Aquino did not exercise this dubious prerogative. There is wisdom there to be learned.

Labrador may be culpable

The endorsement of Alvarez by DepEd Undersecretary Vilma Labrador, the NCCA chair, only gives Labrador away for the books.

Section 22 of Republic Act 7356 states that there may, in fact, be ground for her removal from office: 22.1 ?Culpable violation of the NCCA Implementing Rules and Regulations, and NCCA rules and regulations, and any of its policies and directives.?

Worst, Labrador was part of the hakot crowd rally Caparas held right in the premises of the NCCA in Intramuros. That may have constituted abuse of authority, and may be covered by 22.2 ?Culpable violation of the NCCA Code of Ethics.?

I understand that moves have already begun to plan to unseat Labrador from the NCCA board. If only to uphold the primacy of moral rectitude, this must be pursued by the commissioners, no matter the costs of a painful process.

We have just seen the tumultuous adoration for Cory Aquino. It was a most eloquent statement, to say the least, of what the Filipino people have been searching for all along for a paradigm of good and honest governance, and of a leader who knows how to die to one?s self.

The Cory phenomenon has also come of time vis-à-vis the current row. For, lamentably, the row itself tells us that arts and culture management is back to the days of the Imeldific when it was simply governed by whim and caprice, including lack of delicadeza, and a defiance of law and reason.

And for that, Cecile Guidote-Alvarez will be part of the blame. That is, if she does not do the only honorable thing she now must do -- to decline the award. It is as simple as that.

The author, a Mindanao anthropologist and Inquirer opinion columnist, is an executive council member of the National Committee on Museums of the NCCA. He is the president of the Mindanao Association of Museums which he represents in the NCCA.