Philippine's experiment in nationhood

Philippine's experiment in nationhood

MANILA: At a time when a gang of hostage-takers defines the
international image of the Philippines, it is difficult to escape
the conclusion that our experiment in nationhood is itself
hostage to circumstance. Even today's official celebration of
Independence Day -- a simple affair determined in part by the new
government's budgetary discipline -- is a study in straightened
circumstances. There is an almost palpable air of what the
philosophers call contingency, a resigned sense that we are in
this state of affairs not by choice but by circumstance.

Today is a good day to remind ourselves that our nation was
born because our founding fathers chose to heed the call to
greatness.

It is true that our sense of nationhood began in victimhood,
as an almost involuntary response to a shared experience of often
brutal colonialism. In a famous essay published in 1890, Rizal
wrote: "A new factor is present which did not exist before. The
soul of the nation has been aroused; a common misfortune and a
common abasement have succeeded in uniting the people of the
Islands."

But if the experience of injustice was the motive power that
drove the country's independence movement, it was the hope of "a
noble society" that directed it. After centuries of failed
insurrections, both large and small, the founding fathers knew
that for the revolution to succeed, it must not only be a blow
against oppression but a campaign to build a better life for all.

Several days after declaring independence, and speaking for
the new government, Aguinaldo called on his countrymen to join
him in the endeavor. "(T)aking reason as its sole norm of action,
justice as its sole end and honest labor as its sole means, it
now calls upon and invites all Filipinos ... to come together in
a perfect union for the purpose of creating a noble society."

That was 103 years ago this month. In the century since, the
struggle to create a noble society was often reduced to a more
basic contest: keeping the freedom won with so much difficulty in
the revolution against Spain. We are all familiar with freedom's
story line, and how it has ultimately survived the great
upheavals in our short history: the American usurpation, the
Japanese occupation, the Marcos dictatorship.

As the example of Edsa shows, the more basic struggle of
regaining lost freedom is a simpler one. Like the prospect of a
hanging, it concentrates the public mind wonderfully. There is
one side, and there is the other.

As our sometimes sorry experience since Edsa, however, the
higher struggle to build a society worthy of the nation is a more
complicated task.

The political turbulence of the last several months -- of the
last year, if we include the previous administration's all-out
war in central Mindanao; of the last two years, if we include
deposed President Joseph Estrada's rollercoaster ride through the
public opinion polls -- can be understood as a test precisely of
what free men ought to do with their freedom.

"Many there are who talk of freedom without knowing what it
means," Mabini wrote more than 100 years ago. "Many believe that
once they have gained freedom they may do what they please, good
or bad. This is a great error. One is free only to do good, never
to do evil."

Right from the start, with the Marcos burial issue, the
Estrada administration signaled that it would exercise this
freedom on its own terms; that is, in whichever way it pleased.
Perhaps it could not be helped; there are many other Filipinos
beside Estrada for whom Philippine history is really nothing more
than "weather-weather" politics. His comeuppance at Edsa II,
therefore, triggered by the sight of 11 shameless senators
subverting both truth and justice, may be best understood as
Mabini's sublime revenge. A moral people had had enough.

"Such a people is called to greatness," Aguinaldo declared in
1898, "chosen by Providence to be a sturdy instrument for the
advancement of mankind; such a people cannot fail ... to take its
own place at last, modest, to be sure, but merited, in the great
assembly of free nations."

-- Philippine Daily Inquirer/Asia News Network