On the country’s 125th independence celebration, the republic’s 17th president fittingly recited an ode to heroism and freedom, like a politician’s polished rhetoric wafting eloquently like a poet’s lofty rhyme in a time of remembrance.
“We will grieve not, rather find”, the poet William Wadsworth wrote,” strength in what remains behind.” The messenger must have felt goose bumps all over.
Was it a timely reminder or a timely rebuke? Was the ode an oddity for the only son of a former dictator who, through the twisted bending of history, has ended in sacred ground of heroes? Or, was the message the continued twisting of history?
“There was a time”, the ode continues, “ when meadow, grove and stream , the earth and every common sight, to me did seem, appareled in celestial light, the glory and the freshness of a dream.” He, President Bongbong Marcos, must have summoned back the nostalgic colors of a so-called golden age in his youth when, among others, rice was at P20 per kilo.
“We are the inheritors” the President faithfully recalled” of the glorious heroism and nobility that our great ancestors have demonstrated through our long and storied history”. He proudly, gladly remembered the day when his predecessor paved the way for his beloved father to be finally laid to rest, literally and figuratively, at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
On this independence day , he is reminded that a modern-day hero , a former general and senator has just passed away. He is among our patriots, great ancestors, if you will, who stood their ground on that day, years ago, that ended his father’s dictatorship in a glorious way and sent to exile 10,000 kilometers or so across the sea. We were the toast of the world.
That senator was also hailed as a true public servant who understood and showed, like all great men before him, that servant hood is the way to greatness. One recalls that Rodolfo Biazon, Jr. once visited an indigenous Aeta tribe near Pinatubo and asked how could he help them when Clark was started to bloom as an economic hub after the Americans left.
In the mind of an old local journalist who understood local history, the Aetas were heroes, too, or some of them. In the naming of new roads to progress, he cited one or two of them whose names should be memorialized. The President must have been reminded of these as well. Or needs to be as Aetas continues to struggle in their own ancestral domain because of politics.
The President’s message resonates: assert your liberty. He knows,too, well that there is one, and a woman and former senator, who has been doing just that for the last six years or so. Former Senator Leila de Lima has won two of three cases filed against her by the previous administration on fraudulent, fabricated charges. She would have been a free woman before the President’s message if only a bail or dismissal was ruled by a regional trial court judge.
The judge could have taken cognizance of two court judges dismissing her cases because there were seen as fake cases. The judge should have known his Constitution about the President’s duty to do justice to all men and women. He must have remembered what this President had said from the get- go: he will not interfere in the case of the former senator. Loud and clear. But his medium was his message: the justice secretary allowed, if not ordered, his prosecutors to file an appeal for reversal of an earlier acquittal decision handed by another court. To think, in a moment of fairness, this justice secretary even hailed the former senator’s acquittal a triumph of justice.
Is the President’s emphasis on asserting liberty his indirect comment how justice grinds ever slowly, painfully in this land. His justice secretary should be part of that commentary. Or he himself. Didn’t he, among other leaders, vowed to not allow the International Criminal Court to investigate the war-on-drugs of his predecessor that allegedly victimized from 6,000 to 30,000 individuals?
The day he buckled down to work, the President was reminded by a chosen member of his team to be a model citizen. That call is still in the wilderness. The Supreme Court has ruled a long time ago that the administrators of the Marcos estate, the future president and her mother, should pay the government of real estate tax amounting to P23 billion or the equivalent of P203 billion today. On the other hand, the President has advised Filipinos to pay their tax dues.
To address the country’s financial condition, , the President has pushed for what is known as the Maharlika Sovereign Fund to help government earn through investments. There are doubts and oppositions to the legislative measure now known as the Maharlika Investment Fund, repackaged after several changes due to massive criticism.
“There are still battles that cannot be seen by eyes”, he said in his independence day speech.Is the MSF or the new MIF the battle those on the other side see as risky and uncertain? “The ode deals upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose and the drama upon the real,” wrote the French writer Victor Hugo.
The President’s message wants us to focus on the ideal while we grapple with the drama. In between, we are constantly reminded of an epic performance during a peaceful People Power revolution in 1986 that ended the reign of a dictator only to bring his family back to power two decades later.
