A people long, long, long, deprived of an empowering political voice is a vessel of boiling anger and hatred. You cannot fault them when having found a channel for the long muted aspiration and dammed demand for meaningful Change, what they have won as an empowering weapon must be grasped firmly and wielded fiercely against everyone and everything that they perceive is a threat to its loss. They must hold on to and make use of such weapon as have been denied them for a long, long, time.
Duterte to them is a beacon in the horizon, and they must not lose sight of it as a saving guiding sheen in their trek towards the desired end of the journey. It’s like holding on to an only radiant hope. It may be deemed as a sign of insecurity, yes, alarmed and threatened lest the sight of that sole hope would be gone and Change might just slip through their fingers.
The stake is too precious to be squandered by complacency and indifference. The stakeholders are admirably vigilant—ever on guard, mobilizing their subjective resources for the eventual dawning of Change or meaningful socio-economic reforms. Or the adoption and implementation of the strategic demands of the NDFP.
This is also some kind of a veritable people’s war or a social revolution. There is hardly a middle or neutral position. You are either for the Status Quo and its attendant cultural patterns and trappings, including western-oriented journalistic precepts, or you are for the creation of a new mode of behavior. a new psychology, a new culture. Remember this is a partisan engagement.
The viewpoint of a partisan is always reflective of his standpoint — as extensive or as limited as his quest for his partisan ends. You and I and all of us who have been used to objective treatment of phenomena and events who for good or dubious reason are wont to lay down seemingly impartial arguments or dispassionate discourse would always fail to appreciate the intensity of their passion. Theirs is a purely partisan, if radical, stance for Change long desired and sought.
Lest we forget, a people’s revolt is some form of social upheaval. It is never too refined. It is not a picnic or a dinner party. And the rough and tumble character of its landscape may well invite us to define our own attitude and our own standpoint.
Are we mere fence-sitters? Impartial observers? Are we agents provocateurs? Saboteurs? Or are we catalysts for reforms? Short of being fellow travelers for social transformation?
We, the educated and the intellectual, often pride ourselves with wisdom and intelligence, hold our standpoint a vantage point of impartial dichotomy. But we willfully allow for a sleight of slant in our reporting and represent it as an aspect of a holistic approach. And in the ultimate analysis, what and whom does it serve?—the Status Quo and its politico-economic props?
We have had the luxury and comforts obtaining in an atmosphere of neoliberal culture. We bask in the privilege of being in association with the merchants of power. We have savored the sweet-sour amenities of the “cultured” and the “civilized” in our steeply stratified society. In our heart of hearts, we long to be in league with those in possession of the “good life”.
Could it be that in our conscious or unconscious climb upward to higher social strata we have all along been already wearing “horse blinders”; which, for all intents and purposes, allow us only the breadth and length of such visual field identical to our own narrow self-interest?
Thus, we consign to oblivion our once-upon- a-time concerns as former activists — manning the barricades among Tondo slum dwellers in Plaza Miranda or in the Diliman Commune during those turbulent days of the First Quarter Storm, whence we defied all odds in seizing the day and seizing the hour in our sincerest commitment to “serve the people”, rejecting the notion at the height of our idealism that it might just be a mere faddist adventure, but embracing it as part and parcel of a life-and- death engagement in the national democratic revolution.
Perhaps, we have shun all the skin-to- the-bone slogans we had held sacred and vowed to live and die for? Perhaps, it has occurred to us now that we deserve to be exempt from the hazards of present-day activism? That we have had our share of the struggle? That we have done our part in the making of history? That we are entitled to be blest with accolade and reward as “veterans” of an unfinished revolution?
Well, we have certainly left on the parchment of history prints and traces of our participation in some crucial moments of the unfinished revolution. Let that be a warranty for an enduring loyalty to the ends for which we have had our share in shaping the rough lineaments of the people’s struggle.
