Ideals and betrayals

To be honest, I really don't know where to place myself in this political crisis that's going on or that has been going on for the past 40 years or so. I don't belong to any political organization nor identify myself to any specific ideology. I have friends from the right and more on the left (but sometimes when you look at the mirror, right is left and left is right isn't it?) I have more firends from the civil society from non-profit groups who are also activists, political writers, et al. So where do I place myself? Perhaps I'm leaning more on the call for genuine change like those from PAG-ASA - People's Assembly for Genuine Alternatives to Social Apathy ( check out www.truthforce.info) or with Laban ng Masa's Blueprint for a Viable Philippines. Do I want an armed revolution? To be honest, I'm not sure. Yes, I believe in equity and some socialist principles but also believe in genuine service and leadership that can evolve the country into peacful holistic development. The cause of revolution is really just social change and equality, so if we will be heading there, violence need not be required. Given that power is given to state and the people still. Hmmm, what and how about Hugo Chavez? Right now I'm thinking, who am I to talk about such things? I don't belong anywhere and I don't know the entire stories of political ideologies. Do not criticize me as I am merely, shelling (bullets) out my confusion. I just want to share my efforts in change through whatever means I can contribute. I joined the rally last EDSA 20 anniversary. I was there right in front of the police at Ayala Avenue beside Cheese Escudero ( God knows what his intentions really are hopefully he doesn't get persuaded to join the devils full-time) and Bishop Bachani. I was there, I prayed, I felt the confetti, I heard the heartbeats, I felt the rush but I also felt there should be more of us there. and that, there has to be another form of revolution.

Ok, transition government it is. You have my vote on that. I am encouraging everyone to share your vote on that. Let us all please do something! Do your change. Help everyone you could, you don't need to be apathetic just because you feel you can't change everything. Change something. Do some thing. Just little bit at first, then do more. I used to frown upon Bb Pilipinas doing their charities at orphanages every year and having them publicized. But I started to realize, at least they do something to change. But of course, they could have done more - perhaps go to the streets and really embrace dirty street children hehehe. Join the rallies! Bring your friends! You don't need to be part of whichever movement, just be there and get to know people's views. Participate. Do not taunt or mock of course. You don't talk justice if you are unjust yourself. Just be there. Hope that your ex is not there (maybe hide hehe) and just be. At least you can say you are helping your family, you are helping the streetchildren, you are helping the environment MORE. Because you know very well that the taxes you pay ( or rather, DONATE to the pockets of government officials) or the causes you adovocate will be in good hands and become effective if you vote for good governance.

I'm tired of listening to the news and to government spin doctors. I'm also tired of taunts and mockery and anti-government bashing as well. I'm tired of the same politicos in the limelight of the issues. Sometimes, I don't understand how Cory and Imee Marcos can be seen together nor see Ping Lacson, Erap and Susan Roces together with Satur Ocampo and other militant leaders. I'm not part of a telenovela, right? I respect Satur and other genuine individuals but I do not respect those who claim to be clean and proclaim dirt upon other officials. I do hope that whatever their motives are, that they know that they're going to die someday and whatever popularity or funds they have hoarded for their own glorification will eventually be useless in hell.

Reading all those open emails from silent middle class citizens, teachers and articles about the poor's everyday being a state of emergency, just lead to one conclusion - we are all tired and we might as well be apathetic.Well I don't want to be part of that kind of society. I still believe in people power. I'm proud of the Philippines. Even if we ousted too many presidents, at least we have the democracy to choose and the capacity to participate, that we have power in our own hands. Isn't that proof enough that we can still do something? We're lucky not to be Burmese nor North Korean at this time and age. We elected these people, hell we can strip them off their titles as well! Maki-baka! este, Maki-gulay! :) Update yourself with the news. Read opinion columns, discourse on the issue with friends.aim for the truth.

I've always frowned on politics. I believe in genuine service and leadership instead. But of course, bittersweet me, there is no such language in our government or maybe there are a rare few who cultivate such lives. Randy David reveals a few cigarettes of HOPE that we can puff on. So, we learn our lessons, now let's kick butt.


Public Lives : Ideals and betrayals
First posted 02:53am (Mla time) Mar 12, 2006
By Randy David
Inquirer Editor's Note: Published on page A11 of the March 12, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

ALMOST everyone will probably agree that our national life today is pervaded by a sense of exhaustion. This is best indicated by the weariness we exhale at seeing the faces of the same persons who have dominated the political stage in the last 40 years. Instead of finding in them traces of the values we once fought for, we see only reminders of ideals betrayed. Instead of drawing strength from our past, we burden ourselves with its disappointments.

When the history of our country in the last four decades is finally written, I am sure it will be filled with references to four individuals: Ferdinand Marcos, Cory Aquino, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Each one of them represents a powerful impulse and the promise of a decisive break from all that came before. Each one of them also symbolizes a point of decadence. If we desire to rise from the corruption and move forward, we must patiently retrieve the sources of vitality in our national life. A good way to start is to
clarify the ideals we have fought for, using as guides the discontinuities in the nation's recent past.

Here I examine four such moments of discontinuity: 1972, 1986, 1998 and 2001. They correspond, respectively, to the rise of Marcos, Cory, Erap and GMA.

We mostly associate the Marcos regime today with tyranny and corruption. We forget that this government rose and was initially supported by the people precisely on its promise of a modern dynamic economy run by entrepreneurs and industrialists and freed from the grip of a parasitic land-based oligarchy. At great costs to human rights, Marcos partly delivered on this promise. It was during his time, for example, that the infrastructure for sustained development was first laid down. Indeed Marcos buried the country in debt-partly because of corruption, but partly also because of the massive financial resources that a state-led development program required. None of this, however, should dim the vision of economic development that, at one point, the Marcos regime represented for our people. It remains a vital goal.

The message that Cory Aquino symbolized in 1986 was that basic political freedoms and human rights must never be sacrificed at the altar of economic development. That message-the message of liberal democracy-became the driving force of Edsa I. The program of re-democratization that Edsa I jump-started was unfortunately hijacked early by the impresarios of traditional politics. Instead of building the foundations of a liberal constitutional order on an empowered polity and on new and expanded forms of democratic expression, the Edsa State paved the way for the return of oligarchic politics. The nation found itself mindlessly returning to the security offered by the familiar.

The excesses of a rentier economy driven by elite politics not only constrained economic growth, it also aggravated mass poverty. More and more poor people were excluded from the circuits of the nation's life. The accumulation of the grievances of the poor in the mid-'90s prepared the way for the emergence of Joseph Estrada, the movie actor who championed the cause of the underprivileged in countless movie roles.

View the rest of the article here