Many are understandably outraged at the recent Supreme Court decision allowing the burial of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, with much ire being directed at Rodrigo Duterte and the justices who decided in the affirmative.
My goodness, I can only just roll my eyes. Alright, fine, anyone with a formal educational attainment lower than yours are automatically sheep who can be herded around at whim.
Nowadays, it isn’t just the challenges of topography and climate that place our teachers in peril – oh, if it were only that!
Duterte just shined a very bright spotlight on historical lessons that often get glossed over since, after all, the US is now such a great friend to us…
While anonymity, selflessness, and the notion of sacrifice for something greater than the single person is supposedly extolled, individuality and personal achievement is privileged for a distinct set of burials – those of members of the social, political, and economic elite. No such favor is given the common majority.
Human rights is on everyone’s lips, as well as it should be, for ideas such as these are crowning achievements, or creations, of us as a species.
There are beautiful stretches of highway in Davao Oriental with straight, smooth roads lined with acacia or fire trees. I was reminded of this during a recent trip to Mati City as the fire trees were in red bloom and the acacias remained steadfastly green amidst a landscape ravaged by El Nino.
It is interesting that such accusations are lobbed only at protest actions that are led by the uneducated and the unwashed. Do you hear similar opinions regarding 1986 EDSA or EDSA Dos? It is interesting how quickly we forget the pivotal role of the youth in changing the course of history. Would you call Martial Law student activists as simply “cute” or “impulsive”?
In my previous column where I tackled the 18 March lumad and peasant barricade in front of the EastMinCom of the AFP in Panacan, Davao City, I said that in addition to sympathy and charity, what the protesting farmers and lumad also needed was that the public understand the political roots and implications of their mass action.
Much has already been said about the lumad and peasant barricade last 18 March in front of the Eastern Mindanao Command Headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in Panacan here in Davao City.
