I’ve always ached for words to describe the way we Filipinos regard elections. The closest is, you guessed right, ‘circus’. For most other people elections are just one of those ho-hum exercises of freedom. For us elections are big time show, party and politics in one. I had two chances of watching the U.S. presidential elections: in 1992 and in 2009. Except for their heightened interest in the debates most Americans simply tolerated the exercises the way a patient tolerates a doctor’s knife in the O.R. The young almost always avoided politics like the plague. A recent exception was during the candidacy of then Senator Barak Obama to the highest office of the U.S. when he inspired many people by what Colin Powell called his “transformational figure” looming large in the horizon, coupled with his soaring rhetorical skills.
For us Filipinos elections offer, for now, little such promise. That doesn’t dampen our spirits though. Elections often seem the democratic marijuana that we inhale with abandon. But nothing reveals our national psyche better.
Elections uncover us as a festive people. Colors greet you everywhere you go in the archipelago, and I’m not just talking about campaign posters, streamers or ads. I’m talking about the kind of persons we become when we run for office or express support for our candidates. The basic color of our skin is not brown. It’s celebration. No matter how poor we are, how bad our economy or how terrible the way we are governed, we will always find a reason to celebrate. In our collective mindset elections are one of those reasons. For one, elections offer an open door even to the poor. And shouldn’t that be cause for celebration? I’ve always thought President Quezon shouldn’t have uttered those words about his preference of a Philippines “run like hell by Filipinos” to one “run like heaven” by our favorite foreigners (who else?) because that seemingly has become our lot from Day One Filipinos started running their own country. But ask any Juan or Juana de la Cruz on the streets. And he/she will tell you, “Be that as it may, Sir/Ma’am, we have this one chance to get back at our tormentors, incumbent or future. Elections are our singular weapon to a new tomorrow or to forget today!” And so let the music go blaring, let the politicians go baring their slogans and platforms, let celebrities mix with and entertain the hoi polloi, let candidates believe they are undiscovered singers, dancers, comedians/comediennes. We the people don’t mind. We know the truth anyway. I wonder if our politicians ever realize how all their efforts rarely earn them any serious attention, not to say votes. On the other hand, I think they do and still go on with the show because everybody just wants to celebrate nothing in particular except life that, thank God, is still under some semblance of democracy.
Alas, elections also unwraps the violent streak in us. The Maguindanao Massacre is, to date, its worst and most egregious expression. But before that there were other lesser known or remembered killings and political assassinations. No, it’s not only that some Filipinos and their families believe they have power in their genes. Power is also a tool in keeping a family’s grip on dominance in a turf, its survival or blossoming; violence is a tool of power, yes, violence in arms as well as in words. That explains the mud-slinging and character assassinations that, though also true in other countries, are uniquely Filipino during elections. Verbal and armed violence is a way of advancing the cause of the tribe, defending its turf and honor or eliminating a threat. The sooner we acknowledge the violent streak in us, which finds expression in black propaganda and in actual bloodletting, the better for us in our crusade to find ways of taming it by an informed conscience, more effective laws and internal as well as external restraint. We are no more violent than other races and it’s no use making comparisons. We can only compare ourselves with the best our own history offers. Violence may be a streak in our national character but it doesn’t define us. Wasn’t there an EDSA Revolution of 1986, unique and unrepeatable but also ongoing even as I write, that once served notice to all the world how change can also happen without or with very little violence, with millions of Filipinos at its helm? Wasn’t that our own message in a bottle to ourselves that, yes, we can also go beyond violence to effect change? And, as Catholics (with no prejudice to those who aren’t), don’t we feel justly proud to observe how our faith had something to do with our national tryst with non-violent change?
Alas, elections have also put in display our circuitous relations with discipline. The late president, Ferdinand Marcos, often regarded a dictator, had an uncanny insight into our situation when, in trying to promote his New Society, he coined the motto: “Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan (For the country to progress, discipline is necessary)”. I couldn’t agree more. But the use of external force and Martial Law to instill what is necessarily an internal reality only created more evil than the woeful lack of discipline in our character. Martial Law triggered abuse of power from large sections of the military, engineered assassinations and deaths of perceived enemies of the powers-that-be, normalized human rights violations in the name of national security and nearly consigned us to the dust bin of history. Still Filipinos have scarcely developed any kinship with Lady Discipline. This is particularly clear during elections. You see it in the way our politicians and their supporters skirt elections laws prohibiting display of political ads on trees, electric posts and such other non-designated places (in the province it seems to me there are no non-designated places). But how do we solve a problem like undisciplined Filipinos? Maybe a really professional military and more police presence can help. Maybe better law enforcement can help. Maybe the elimination of criminal impunity can help. But nothing will truly help until Filipinos themselves welcome Lady Discipline into their daily lives not as an imposed companion but as necessary partner, friend and relative in the family clan called development.
Alas, elections have uncovered a collective lust in many of us for money or power. We cheer our democratic space, but have we not made elections a way of making as much as of losing money? The billions of pesos now being spent boggle the imagination. TV networks, advertising and printing companies are only some of the gainers. There are even candidates who run with very little chance of winning and suddenly withdraw from the race at the homestretch. They invite talks, such as: “Oh, he’s got his money already. That’s why he’s calling it quits.” On the other hand, I have personally met some politicians who have lost unimagined amounts of property and hard-earned cash to the bottomless pit of election campaign drudgery to which they succumb in order to gain even a modicum of power. I’ve been amazed no end at how the quest for power has often impoverished otherwise well-off citizens and enriched once poor ones. The medieval search for the Holy Grail sometimes even pales in comparison to the Filipino frenzy to obtain power at whatever cost financially or otherwise. Why? Not in order to serve but because for some it’s the surest road to more money and money is the surest road to more power. And our poor? Oh, they know all this by instinct. In my hometown and I suspect in others too, they have a day or two of spending spree because of elections, never mind a rainy day tomorrow.
Indeed, rainy tomorrows will always be our lot unless we use elections to elect the leaders we need, not the leaders who need to be elected.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Is the Filipino self-image in perpetual search of poise?
Just when we thought Filipino bashing is a thing of the past an Italian-American comedian recently rouses us from stupor by his unkind remarks on Manny Pacquiao and our ‘supposed’ sex tours as the only things going for this country and for the race that produced Rizal. Of course, he apologizes the day after, mainly because of an avalanche of animated (at best) or irate (at worst) responses from Pinoys all over the world. Quite possibly the comedian just wanted a little attention for himself, which he clearly achieved from an unspecified number of members of the aggrieved party (us), but my sense is that he also expresses a view by certain foreigners of Filipinos and the Philippines which they can’t quite put into words in polite conversations. I remember an American friend, one of a few, who made bold to ask me: “Father, why are things in your country such a mess most of the time?” I suddenly had a barrage of images in my head showing why he had such a dim view of us: typhoons, the Ondoy flooding, the El Niño drought, the endless political scams, file videos of Smokey Mountain, high corruption indexes, negative confrontational politics, the Maguindanao massacre, polluted air, seas, rivers and garbage everywhere… I said: “For some of it, nature is to blame. For most of it, we are to blame. But, give us the credit, at least we’re searching for a way out.” Until when the search ends I don’t have any idea. Nor most Pinoys, I gather.
Sadly, the dim view I speak of is what many of us Filipinos ourselves adhere to but would, nonetheless, not tolerate foreigners publicly airing such an outrage. Now, I’m not saying that many Pinoys actually believe that only Manny Pacquiao and our ‘supposed’ sex tours define who we are. I’m saying, however, that many of us have very low image of ourselves such that when sensational champion athletes, like the Pacman, or artists, like Charice, do us proud with their gifts, or when our villains put us to shame with sex tours, high corruption and other abominations, we treat them with habitually screaming headlines to the effect that we drown out attention to other things that express the better side of who we are. And why we hardly see how, by and large, foreigners only take their cue from us, frankly, escapes me.
But do we believe in our better side? Is there such a thing? we ask. To my mind, the better side of who we are is also real and beyond reasonable (or unreasonable) doubt. I know you would say you would grant that we as a people are capable of so many good things despite our so many not-so-good circumstances… Pardon me, but I’m not speaking in the abstract. This is very well manifest in doctors or nurses we meet who prefer to stay in the country despite their low pay and less-than-ideal working conditions; teachers who teach children in far-flung barangays despite the untold sacrifices it takes (I habitually witness three teachers who once a week literally claw their way through slippery rocks and jungle paths to reach children they teach); government workers who stay honest despite the culture of corruption breathing on them; political candidates who advocate non-popular but correct (that is, even from the moral perspective) viewpoints and standpoints despite survey results; voters who reject even the very idea of getting money for their votes despite having to forego sometimes generous amounts of money; journalists who tell the truth behind the facts despite their own biases or political leanings; students who live up to the idealism of their youth despite gaining in age and experiencing a corrupt system; politicians who avoid gutter politics and choose instead to address the real problems of their constituents and of the nation despite losing opportunities to put down rivals; poor farmers and fishermen who work hard, not allowing their family’s future to fall into the hands of fate or unscrupulous politicians, despite the latter’s heavy influence in their own families, neighborhoods and the society at large.
Behind these words are real people. These real people should be our sources of insight into who we really are.
We do not owe our dignity to our athletes, artists, politicians, economists or to our economic-socio-political systems and conditions, however much good or evil we discern in them. Nor do we owe it to foreigners, comedians or non-comedians, journalists or plain ordinary folks with or without objective outlooks. Neither do we owe it to our own race and nation, whatever native praiseworthy or unworthy traits we might have. We owe our dignity only to God; and the dignity he has gifted us with surpasses all our weaknesses. It is a dignity that deserved the life of his very own Son when we lost it and when only God could buy it back through God’s own self-gift. And buy it back he did; in a larger sense (as saints and theologians remind us), God raised our dignity higher that it was. Now we are not just images and likenesses; we are sons and daughters in the Son. In a War Memorial I once visited with friends I saw in one section the words written in bold letters: “Freedom is not free.” The same thing can be said of the restoration and exaltation of our dignity. We were not bought back without a struggle nor simply by the blood of our heroes then and now. We were bought back by the blood of the only Son.
The real question is: How have we Filipinos been treating our real dignity? To put it differently: Do we allow the questions put to us by the priest on Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday to direct our real, daily on-going self-evaluations? Or have they just become components of a tired and empty ritual act? Consider these: “Do you reject sin, so as to live in the freedom of God’s children?” “Do you reject the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin?” “Do you reject Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness?” “Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth?…Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord?…Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?” After rejecting Satan and all evil, we are asked to believe. That is, we must also ‘be’ and ‘live’ who we are.
In other words, how we truly deal with Easter’s questions in our daily grind determines whether or not we will finally achieve poise in our search for the self-image that finally matches our dignity.
Sadly, the dim view I speak of is what many of us Filipinos ourselves adhere to but would, nonetheless, not tolerate foreigners publicly airing such an outrage. Now, I’m not saying that many Pinoys actually believe that only Manny Pacquiao and our ‘supposed’ sex tours define who we are. I’m saying, however, that many of us have very low image of ourselves such that when sensational champion athletes, like the Pacman, or artists, like Charice, do us proud with their gifts, or when our villains put us to shame with sex tours, high corruption and other abominations, we treat them with habitually screaming headlines to the effect that we drown out attention to other things that express the better side of who we are. And why we hardly see how, by and large, foreigners only take their cue from us, frankly, escapes me.
But do we believe in our better side? Is there such a thing? we ask. To my mind, the better side of who we are is also real and beyond reasonable (or unreasonable) doubt. I know you would say you would grant that we as a people are capable of so many good things despite our so many not-so-good circumstances… Pardon me, but I’m not speaking in the abstract. This is very well manifest in doctors or nurses we meet who prefer to stay in the country despite their low pay and less-than-ideal working conditions; teachers who teach children in far-flung barangays despite the untold sacrifices it takes (I habitually witness three teachers who once a week literally claw their way through slippery rocks and jungle paths to reach children they teach); government workers who stay honest despite the culture of corruption breathing on them; political candidates who advocate non-popular but correct (that is, even from the moral perspective) viewpoints and standpoints despite survey results; voters who reject even the very idea of getting money for their votes despite having to forego sometimes generous amounts of money; journalists who tell the truth behind the facts despite their own biases or political leanings; students who live up to the idealism of their youth despite gaining in age and experiencing a corrupt system; politicians who avoid gutter politics and choose instead to address the real problems of their constituents and of the nation despite losing opportunities to put down rivals; poor farmers and fishermen who work hard, not allowing their family’s future to fall into the hands of fate or unscrupulous politicians, despite the latter’s heavy influence in their own families, neighborhoods and the society at large.
Behind these words are real people. These real people should be our sources of insight into who we really are.
We do not owe our dignity to our athletes, artists, politicians, economists or to our economic-socio-political systems and conditions, however much good or evil we discern in them. Nor do we owe it to foreigners, comedians or non-comedians, journalists or plain ordinary folks with or without objective outlooks. Neither do we owe it to our own race and nation, whatever native praiseworthy or unworthy traits we might have. We owe our dignity only to God; and the dignity he has gifted us with surpasses all our weaknesses. It is a dignity that deserved the life of his very own Son when we lost it and when only God could buy it back through God’s own self-gift. And buy it back he did; in a larger sense (as saints and theologians remind us), God raised our dignity higher that it was. Now we are not just images and likenesses; we are sons and daughters in the Son. In a War Memorial I once visited with friends I saw in one section the words written in bold letters: “Freedom is not free.” The same thing can be said of the restoration and exaltation of our dignity. We were not bought back without a struggle nor simply by the blood of our heroes then and now. We were bought back by the blood of the only Son.
The real question is: How have we Filipinos been treating our real dignity? To put it differently: Do we allow the questions put to us by the priest on Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday to direct our real, daily on-going self-evaluations? Or have they just become components of a tired and empty ritual act? Consider these: “Do you reject sin, so as to live in the freedom of God’s children?” “Do you reject the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin?” “Do you reject Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness?” “Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth?…Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord?…Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?” After rejecting Satan and all evil, we are asked to believe. That is, we must also ‘be’ and ‘live’ who we are.
In other words, how we truly deal with Easter’s questions in our daily grind determines whether or not we will finally achieve poise in our search for the self-image that finally matches our dignity.
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