Far From Neutral Notions - Philippine politics, culture and stuff

“Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.” — Seneca

Are we truly independent? Did the sacrifice of our forefathers get us anywhere? Are we free?

It’s a series of questions (and their variants) that’s been asked to death - from High School classrooms to beauty pageants - with the former setting sometimes providing geniuinely truthful insight, and the latter often providing further reason why it’s called a “beauty contest” and not a quiz bee.

It’s also a series of questions that aren’t relevant anymore. Nobody makes a claim for being independent with a straight face in this day and age. It doesn’t provoke the kind of fiery rhetoric that it should, that it did half a century ago. We are hostage to the IMF, the World Bank, the US, Japan, China, and whichever country has the cash to spare. Global trade hasn’t opened the world to our markets, it has opened ours to theirs. Our domestic courts are often interfered with. Our laws are often made to suit the needs of Unka Sam. The present administration even goes so far as to hire foreign lobbyists and advisers. We are not independent - and it often seems we never were.

The question we should be asking ourselves is: do we even want to be independent? We talk a great deal about independence, how it ought to be important, how proud we (sometimes) are about being Filipinos when Pacquiao slugs it out with some Mexican. What does it even mean to be independent, in this day and age when patriotism and nationalism aren’t words that are used to sing you praises but are taken to mean that you are backward-thinking and behind the times? What value has independence now, when “don’t rock the boat” is the national mantra? Why people have tuned out the cries for GMA to resign, pretending to be all sorts of deaf blind and dumb to the reality of her illegitimacy?

And so, more than a hundred years after the Aguinaldo declaration in Cavite-Viejo, we’re stuck wondering if this is really what we wanted. All of a sudden the whole “I’d rather have the country run like hell by Filipinos” bit by Quezon isn’t looking too appealing now that it is being run like hell by a Filipino.

Does it still mean anything to you, to be a Filipino? It does to me, but I can’t see myself as anything else. Somebody light a candle, I’m stuck cursing the darkness.

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