BY ROMMEL YNION
DO we need change?
Yes.
I’m glad Filipinos have felt the urgency of change. But what exactly is change to them? And what exactly do they want to be changed? Obviously, they just want change pronto. Period.
There is no question they don’t like PNoy anymore and everything associated with him. That is an unshakeable fact, of course. And now, they want him “changed”. But how? Now, they weigh their options, considering in each of them every pro and every con.
They have glimpsed several faces on the horizon: Jojo Binay, Mar Roxas, Alan Cayetano, Bongbong Marcos, and even Miriam Santiago. Does each of them really represent change? Of course, aside from their faces, can they really offer something new? Something that means change?
Now, these are the questions that cry for answers.
First of all, does a change of faces mean change? Since the 1986 EDSA revolution, we have seen faces come and go. But have they left behind change? Same old stuff, as you may say. Yes, same old story, summed up in just one word: Corruption.
Of course, we don’t need calculators to see the facts 28 years after Marcos left: more money stolen compared to the loot of the late dictator; more journalists killed compared to the time of martial law; more human rights abuses compared to that same period.
What then does this tell us? That faces have changed but nothing has really changed. It’s the same old thing since time immemorial. The things that scandalize our senses in PNoy’s time are the same things that scandalized us in Marcos’ time.
Oh yes, we also suffer from dictatorship, too. It’s a dictatorship not in its usual sense of word, but in its mutated form of horror. Matter-of-factly, our president, armed with pork barrel, adopts the carrot-and-stick approach in controlling both houses of Congress. Now, isn’t that dictatorship? In form, it may be not. But in substance, it is definitely as suffocating as Marcosian rule.
The abuses of PNoy’s dictatorial rule have shaken every nook and cranny of our justice system which now faces the abolition of the judiciary fund – which, actually, is peanuts compared to the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) and Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) – on the heels of congressional efforts to outlaw it apparently in retaliation to the Supreme Court ruling that rendered any form of pork barrel as unconstitutional.
Now, if that is not dictatorship, then I don’t know what is.
If change of faces can’t amount to change, what does it take then to bring about change? Does it take a miracle? Or a magic wand from a sorcerer? Or a bolt of lightning that ignites a Eureka moment to let discovery of the path to it pop out of the blue? No question change is a must, and a must-see – but how?
Obviously, change does not happen from outside in, but inside out. And that is where the problem lies: Our ignorance of the fact that change must come from within, not from without. First things first. We need change in ourselves.
The world is no different from a garden in which everything just reflects its seed of origin. Corruption then is just an offshoot of our character. It starts with the way we think. It starts with the way we feel. It starts with the way we act. Yes, it starts with the way we are.
If our leaders are corrupt, is it because we are also corrupt? If our leaders are dishonest, is it because we are also dishonest? If our leaders are greedy, is it because we are also greedy? If our leaders are cruel, is it because we are also cruel? If our leaders only care about themselves, is it because we, too, only care about ourselves? No doubt our world is just a reflection of us.
Alas, we don’t need a change of men, but a change in men. What matters then is not what our country does, but what we do about it. What matters then is not what our countrymen do to us, but what we do to them. What matters then is not what the government does, but what we do about it.
Let us change then the way we are. Let us change then the way we think. Let us change the way we feel. Let us change then the way we act. It is the first step not only in fixing our broken culture but also in paving a path to change.
As within, so without; as above, so below./PN
