BY THEIR fruits, or their heroes, they shall be known.
We are a nation of heroes. We have patriots in abundance, and we can rival any nation in that sense. We even named a fish after a hero who defeated a foreign colonizer. Except that our sense of heroism is of a different brand.
Our national hero, Dr. Jose P. Rizal intimated that in his essay ‘The Philippines, A Century Hence’. No nation, he wrote, had a monopoly of love of country. Filipinos also loved their country no less than the Spaniards did, despite being under their yoke and who considered the natives a yokel.
But Rizal agreed that Filipinos were so difficult to stir up against oppression, their docile character further exploited by the friars into virtual subservience of the local populace. The famed TV series ‘John n Marsha’ had that subtle parody. In the third chapter of his book ‘Noli Me Tangere’, Rizal took an ingenious revenge against the friars. In a dinner tendered for the homecoming hero, Ibarra, Rizal perhaps had a sense what was coming when the neck and wings of a chicken were served to the infamous, if not villainous, Padre Damaso.
Revenge is best served cold but Rizal had a different idea with a presumably hot chicken ‘tinola’ served to Kapitan Tiago’s favorite priest.
Some suspect that that scene in the ‘Noli’ was what eventually angered the friars to influence Rizal’s eventual execution and martyrdom. But, Rizal’s death gave birth to more Filipino heroes and heroines in the revolution against Spain. Rizal saw it: colonization will collapse under its own weight.
A hero is not a noun but a verb, according to Roberty Downey Jr.
We are both, depending on circumstances, but always hard to wake up from slumber or prompt to rise against abuses as Rizal thought. Well, there was once EDSA and Ninoy’s death that precipitated it, the modern day hero who said the Filipino is worth dying for. At least two members of his family, his wife Cory and son Noynoy became presidents and gave their best to prove it.
Vice President Leni Robredo thinks Filipino heroism is protean but sublime. In the pandemic, she saw it embodied by the health workers doing their risky tasks to the ordinary citizen simply following the health protocols.
In other words, a hero or heroine is one who does the best he or she can for the common good. Heroism is everybody’s business by this definition, and one rarely has to die for it.
If, for instance, Health Secretary Francisco Duque steps down as more people call for his resignation in light of the irregularities in his department and the continuing crisis brought about by the pandemic, his decision can be appreciated in this light.
Senator Bong Go said so when he asked Duque to make that supreme sacrifice. Duque, however, doesn’t think he’s a hero in this sense. He said he would do so at the right time.
What that ‘right time’ would be is anybody’s guess. It could mean when his principal and protector, President Duterte, finally decides that it’s time for Duque to call it quits. Or when the Commission on Audit shall have changed its tune and its flagging of uses of funds and purchases in the health deemed a big error. Or when the Ombudsman absolves Duque from any wrongdoing. Or when hell freezes over.
The senators, heroes in their own right, may just have the last word on the matter though. The recent findings that a small time supplier won a big time contract for alleged overpriced health suppliers could just be ‘the right time’ Duque needs.
So far, Duque is satisfied about being either a hero unto himself or a non-hero to others , even if many thinks of him as the wrong person to head the most important department in government as the virus increasingly upends people’s lives, especially the poor.
Some say the Filipinos are proving to be a noun despite the unrelenting assault on their democratic institutions and processes. They seem flat, even consenting to some degree, to the obvious human rights implications of dubious rules . Duterte has just accepted his nomination by his party PDP-Laban as its vice presidential bet. The opposition, particularly the framers of the 1987 Constitution, smell something fishy about the proposition. It’s a way of circumventing the Charter provision on the no-reelection of a president, good or bad.
Our times call for heroism, indeed.
Sen. Manny Pacquiao is attempting to be heroic in crafting a 22-round plan for the Philippines while preparing against his fight against Errol Spence Jr./Yordanis Ugas for a championship title. (The plan gives an idea how big a hole the country is in). He lost big in his match, including his bragging rights about speed, skill and stamina. His supporters and fans believe his planning while training was a big distraction.
With the elections fast approaching, Filipinos should be able to draw from their innate heroism, however hard to muster, like a pulling a bad tooth, in these trying times. Even as the Delta variant is wreaking havoc from north to south, political advertisement, in tarpaulins and TV ads, are slowly but surely getting people’s attention or distraction as to possible heroes and heroines in our midst.
As of this writing, there are no official presidential bets yet from any present or conceivable party, although popular names,old and new , are being pushed as potential candidates. The apparent indecisiveness may be a function of the current mess the country’s politics is in now or its dysfunctional economy plus the debilitating effects of the pandemic.
Who is able to awaken the Filipinos’ heroism to make it right this time in choosing the right president to lead the country in the next six years deserve to have that honorific title that, for so long, has been derogated.
In short, it’s time the Filipinos became a verb, once more.
