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BY SONIA D. DAQUILA
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Saturday, February 25, 2017
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FEBRUARY is the month of heroes, villains and the in-betweens. This is the month to reminiscence how great, how selfless and how brave the Filipinos could be.
Thirty-one years had passed since then, when the EDSA revolution dramatically unfolded, as the affirmation of the Philippine constitutional provision that our country is a republican and democratic state, and sovereignty resides in the people. Today, not everyone who witnessed the EDSA phenomenon wants to talk about it.
As a teacher of Political Science courses, I always feel the obligation to go deeper into the Philippine political culture, to discover and learn with my students why do we behave as we do as a people. One activity we have is film analysis where we watch the “People Power.”
Every time this movie is shown, I see students moved to tears at the sight of nuns, soldiers and laymen linking arms and saying prayers together. Priests and seminarians were there, carrying religious icons and seemingly exorcising the soldiers. Young and old alike were giving flowers, food and water to our soldiers. There were holy masses, fasting, vigils and religious activities from different religious denominations, and the key players were in focus.
It was a confluence of people from all walks of life. Towards the end of the movie, June Keithley, the anchor woman, announced that the dictator had already fled to Hawaii. She sobbed and said, “Never again” while Nolide Castro was wiping his tears.
Consequently, the doors of Malacañang were forced open. The picture of Imelda Marcos was taken off the hook, slapped, spat at and stepped upon by the angry mob. The barb wires in Mendiola were cut and tied with yellow ribbons, souvenirs of a “smiling revolution” that amazed the whole world.
The EDSA Revolution was unrehearsed, unprecedented, and emotionally laden. That was a unique revolution, likened to a dam of anger, hatred, frustration, oppression and discontent, suppressed for more than 20 years. Consequently, the dike of dictatorship could not hold them back anymore, and it burst out.
The EDSA Revolution was an awakening. At that point the Filipinos felt they were one. They realized that they had a common cause worth dying for. Call it by any name. It was the assertion of the Filipino people’s sovereignty.
Today is the 31st anniversary of that EDSA Revolution. Do the millennials understand and appreciate its implications? Maybe for a few. Indeed, that people power was an assembly of heroes and villains, the in-betweens, the flip-flopped, depending on where the wind of fortune blows.
These in-betweens left us with a balimbing tree (a star-shaped fruit with several ridges) blooming in profusions. Eventually, EDSA lost its luster.
In one occasion, I was invited to speak on the revolution and during the open forum, one student asked, “Considering the sacrifices of our heroes in the past, do we deserve the kind of government that we have?”and I answered, “Yes, even our national hero said,‘the kind of government that we have is the kind of government that we deserve.’”
Another student angrily asked, “Do we deserve a corrupt and inefficient government?” and I answered, “Very much. Our national hero also said, ‘Like people, like government. The kind of government that we have is just the reflection of a kind of people that we are.’”
We simply deserve whatever kind of government we have. We deserve corrupt, immoral government officials. We deserve to starve. We deserve cronyism and political dynasties. We deserve to be a country of gamblers, of prostitutes, of slaves, of drug addicts and of drug lords. We deserve officials who instantly get sick when indicted.
We Filipinos are gentle, patient, tolerant, forgiving and apathetic. Tolerance, though, grows to passivity and passivity to becoming stoic. Julito Kanoy was right when he said, we have the carabao-tamaraw attitude. Even the Spaniards called us “carabaos.” Most of us are oblivious to the world. We could wallow in the mud contentedly, although once in a while we go berserk (nagwawala or naga-maoy).
At EDSA, we saw how people stopped tanks by their prayers, songs, tears and pleas. Like cogon grass, however, we burn like wildfire, yet, our enthusiasm is short-lived. We have short memories. We easily forget.
True, the tamaraw easily slides back to his being a carabao, languid, indifferent patient to the point of stoicism and stupidity.
In the secular point of view, dictators and victims should learn from the lesson of EDSA that excesses in the pursuit of power and fame lead to downfall. In the sacral point of view, it is worth remembering this passage, “I hear the cries of my people when they turn away from their wicked ways and I shall deliver them.” (delsocorrodaquila@mail.com/PN)
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