Hallways of power are trodden by shady figures and miserable cowards bereft of conscience. The path of truth is trampled upon by colluding statesmen who brazenly buttress fallacious arguments to serve and protect their esteemed cohorts implicated in graft and malversation of public funds. Included in the mix of malfeasance characters are a ‘riding in tandem’ archetypes of hoodoo legislation with shared culpability of the more grievous crimes against humanity. And there are countless more minions who should be prosecuted but manage to take flight and nestle under the protection of other felonious figures of authority. Why then is there such a befuddlement as to how chaotic state of affairs are when people themselves are responsible for lending credence to
disreputable characters whose qualifications and capabilities are not only fitted for impropriety but criminality?
The perpetual threat to the nation’s sovereignty or its impediment by foreign influence is dwarfed by the incessant bastardization of the law and due process by the very people entrusted to preserve and abide by it.
The penchant for gross misconduct by public officials
is being tolerated by the media’s dimwitted criticisms and languid exhortations by so called legal experts from the academia. Miscreants in suits and garish Filipiniana are inured to flip flopping stance of showboating instigators. All these pretentious debates and grandstanding, eliciting knee jerk reaction from scandal enthusiasts and multigenerational yahoos and retards only help drag democracy to a virtual collapse down the hellhole.
An organized destabilization of an already flawed system is spearheaded by a mob of machinators. They engage in wrangling legal matters to obfuscate every legal issue in a relentless attempt to block the unadulterated administration of justice. If the freedom to transgress with impunity is exercised as privilege by traitors to the constitution, the electorate and the nation as a whole, then in no part should Philippine Independence be observed as victory of present day Filipinos over tyranny by colonial masters of the past. For there is an insidious infestation of democratic principles by an insular herd of brigands who since the early days of the revolution against the Spaniards and the Americans, bribery, corruption and all its manifestations of avarice have been flowing in some hereditary cold veins like tainted blood, being passed on to generations of ‘cultured’ rotten eggs.
The straight-faced callousness of notorious public servants with their stinking lies reeking out of their mouths, the odious distortions of facts and putrid smell of their fabricated speeches could only come from a tradition-handed scheme of deceiving the masses as they assiduously divest funds and resources in the open. It is embedded in institutions like cancer cells, gestating through centuries of hideous representation of body politic.
Governance within the moral boundaries of liberty is being usurped time and again by the same type of marauders, posturing as benefactors and protectors of rights on behalf of its constituents. As customary unfurling of Philippine flags during Independence Day kick off celebrations, kitschy display of patriotism conceals the true colour of attending participants and revellers. People have been far too complacent about all the blatant displays of corruption and human rights violation by familiar faces of villainy. Festivities engendering nostalgia for those who are just as blind in their religiosity naively hope for transcendental change at their political idols’ behest.
The shockingly absurd tolerance and acceptance by adulating citizenry of erring officials who put themselves above the law, acting as if they are entitled to commit crimes while in office, begs the question as to whether ghosts of duplicitous colonial subjects under foreign tyrannies from centuries past never left the islands. Slavery to ignorance and fatalism pervade in the smug consciousness of multitudes clinging to the romantic idea of ‘independence’ while allowing a small circle of emboldened local thugs perform the same vicious habit of abusing their authority, rivalling those rapacious foreign expropriators which occupied the country.
In the last chapter of Rizal’s second novel, ‘El Filibusterismo’, the prognosticator-hero adept in examining social ills in his homeland had this profound analogy spoken by the old native priest Padre Florentino to a revolutionary Simoun who was seeking refuge in his house as he laid dying (translated from the original Spanish) :
“As long as we see our countrymen, in private life, feel
the shame within them and hear the clamor of the
voice of conscience revolting and protesting, but in
public life keep themselves quiet and even join those
abusing their power in ridiculing the abused, as long
as we see them shutting themselves up in their
selfishness and praising with forced smiles the most
iniquitous acts, begging with their eyes a portion of the
booty, why should they be given the liberty? With
Spain or without Spain they will always be the same,
and perhaps, perhaps, worse! What is independence
for if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of
tomorrow? And they shall undoubtedly be such,
because he loves tyranny who submits himself to it.”
Rizal began writing the novel in 1887 in his hometown Calamba, Laguna. He then revised some chapters while he was in London and Paris. He finished the manuscript in Biarritz France in 1891 after toiling over it for more than three years.
In 1898, the Filipinos gained independence from Spain, with the intervention of the new imperial power, the United States of America. The undermining of the country’s newly minted ‘Independence’ then led to a bloody war with the Americans that sacrificed the lives of as many as 200,000 Filipinos. The rest is history of embattled Filipinos reclaiming the memory of the legitimate struggle of their heroes in liberating itself from the clutches of imperialists and neo-colonialists. But has it liberated itself from the massive corruption, infighting and festering of old wounds between political factions and feuding clans?
“Liberty secured at the sword’s point”, says Padre
Florentino, “plays but little part in modern affairs, but
that we must secure it by making ourselves worthy of
it, by exulting the intelligence and the dignity of the
individual, by loving justice, right and greatness, even
to the extent of dying for them – and when a people
reaches the height God will provide a weapon, the
idols will be shattered, the tyranny will crumble like a
house of cards and liberty will shine out like the first
dawn.”
Have Filipinos ever been worthy of that liberty secured at the sword’s point in 1898? The theatrical mud-slinging in high profiled political arena and the customarily shrugged off swinging cudgels of barbarity in fiefdoms usually take a breather come Independence Day – to pay homage to heroes they unwittingly betrayed. ####