BY ROMMEL YNION
FORTY two years after the declaration of martial law, our country is still under dictatorship. Nothing has really changed. It’s just the same old dog but with a different collar.
It is no longer a one-man rule that governed us with presidential decrees but the rule of the few that suffocates us with deception, disorder and decay.
Yes, the face of this dictatorship is no longer that of Marcos but of an octopus whose tentacles have strangled this nation to near-death.
This octopus has manipulated all sectors of our society in a way that has been barely visible to the naked eye. But to the discerning ones among us, it has been as clear as daylight.
We may now christen this octopus Malacañang which we associate with unlimited power, unlimited wealth and unlimited influence.
Malacañang controls both houses of Congress and even to a certain extent, the judiciary. Isn’t this dictatorship?
Like a puppeteer, it enthralls us with puppet shows everyday, its puppets dancing in tune with him.
A puppeteer is an amusing dictator. Unlike other tyrants, he entertains his audience as he manipulates his puppets.
Isn’t this the reality we face today? We all watch puppet shows, especially in Congress, on a daily basis.
Our legislators have become nothing but bootlickers of the president. Instead of legislating laws for the common good, they have only been working hard for Malacañang.
And, like all hard workers, they get paid, of course. Big time.
The president rules with a carrot and a stick. Everybody tows the line for fear of being “excommunicated” from their religion of insatiable greed.
Hundreds of millions of people’s money end up in their pockets as reward for their loyalty to their Big Boss.
This kind of money has been enough to hold them in awe of the presidency whose tentacles stretch into every nook and cranny of our society especially where its interests have to be protected.
Where can you find a Senate, for instance, that spends more time destroying the enemies of the president than investigating in aid of legislation more serious issues bedeviling our country?
Yes, they serve first and protect first the interests of the president before anything else. Aren’t they supposed to serve the people first whose taxes fund their pay checks? But, that’s only in theory. In practice, it’s an entirely different ball game.
In short, as long as they serve the interests of the president who, at this point, only represents the oligarchy, they feel they have already fulfilled their mandate as the servants of the people. Now, is there anything more idiotic than this?
No matter how idiotic it may be, we still watch it like any puppet show, knowing full well that the prime mover of it all is the puppeteer behind the curtains whose thinking is simply beyond our grasp.
And that is where our country is now. Since we don’t know what is on the mind of the puppeteer, we just watch his puppet show as it unfolds, bracing ourselves for anything untoward that might happen. But what can we do? It’s just beyond our control.
We may delude ourselves into thinking that we have been free since Marcos fled 28 years ago. But are we really free? To some, the answer to this is self-evident. To others, it is still “iffy”.
If we are still in a state of denial, we can ask ourselves this question again after we watch another “puppet show” strangling to death any threat to the power and might of the presidency. It is one thing to crush the enemies of the state. It is quite another thing to crush the enemies of the president alone. That is not patriotism. That is totalitarianism.
Whether we like it or not, we still have the same old dog, albeit with a different collar./PN
