The death of Adamson University student John Matthew Salilig at the hands of his presumptive fraternity “brothers” is a wake-up call to everyone, especially those with a relative in a college or university, that hazing is a continuing problem in many schools as well as in other Philippine institutions. Salilig’s case is in fact provoking other citizens who had so far been silent to reveal how their own kin were similarly victimized.
As the visiting European Union (EU) parliamentarians were declaring that the human rights situation in the Philippines has “improved,” a 17-year-old male and two others had apparently been abducted in a Batangas town. Very few details were available as this column was being written, but it was only one of the many abductions that are still happening despite the change in administration last July, 2022.
The Marcos II administration has declared that part of its foreign policy is strengthening Philippine relations with other ASEAN countries and with China. But it is still the US on which the country has to depend for its external defense because, despite the billions spent on its supposed “modernization,” the Armed Forces of the Philippines cannot even protect Filipino fisherfolk from Chinese harassment and is most expert only at the suppression of dissent and social unrest. No government is to blame for this predicament except the Philippines’ own.
Should Congress decide to either convene itself into a constituent assembly or to call for elections for delegates to a constitutional convention, the citizenry must closely monitor the process — not because the 1987 Constitution is Corazon Aquino’s most outstanding legacy, but because, at this critical stage in the country’s history, it is among the people’s few remaining means of defense against the return of authoritarian rule and the further ruin of this country.
Mr. Marcos could use his new-found skills in international relations to convince the rest of the world of that need. But rather than just globe-trotting, he could also craft and implement the policies that can combat the ravages of global warming here, in frontline Philippines.
The consequences have since been evident in the common belief that there is one law for the rich and powerful and another for the poor and powerless. But the justice system over which DoJ Secretary Remulla now presides could still gain some measure of credibility. Other than merely demonstrating its alleged impartiality in the case of such high-profile cases as its current Secretary’s son, it could also look into actively helping speed up the judicial process.
The inflation rate remains sky-high. Low productivity is putting the country’s food security at risk. Filipino fisherfolk are unable to fish in much of the Philippines’ own waters. Poverty and hunger are devastating millions. Entire regions are flooded and reeling from the onslaught of climate change. The pandemic is still a problem, and the economy yet to recover.
Not only the alleged involvement of government officials in it is among the fallouts in the investigation of — and hopefully the prosecution and punishment of those responsible for — the murder of broadcaster and online journalist Percy Lapid (Percival Mabasa). It is also its reminding the public and the rest of the world of one of the best-kept, but nevertheless well-known secrets in this country: the dismal and shameful state of its prisons.
If the “spiral of violence” against journalists does end, or is at least minimized, the dividends would be to free expression, press freedom, and, quite possibly, the return of the enterprise and investigative journalism that this country needs to help it move forward.
Whether the Marcos administration’s response will go beyond mere words is what the independent press, media advocacy groups, journalists’ unions, and free expression defenders and advocates should be monitoring in the coming weeks and months of the Marcos watch.
Instead of attacking the COA should it find and report an anomaly in this or that agency, President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. could urge the offending party to do better. In doing so he would be defending the Commission as a Constitutional body crucial to the drive for good government and national development to which every administration, including his and his predecessor’s, claim to be committed.
Like any coup in the less developed countries of the Third World, a coup in the US, even a “soft” one, would also be solely focused on advancing and defending the interests of its instigators and of the wing of the power elite it installs in power. The rest of the world would hardly matter.
If indeed the Marcos II administration intends to bring back the past by, among other means, making ROTC mandatory again, 21 years after it was made an NTSP elective, it could start by first instituting the needed reforms in the program to prevent or at least reduce the corruption, abuses and violence that many associate with it.
A replication of mindless conformity and blind obedience is in process in the Philippines, where the power elite and its minions regard dissent and the diversity of views necessary in a democracy as a vice rather than virtue. Instead of unity in diversity, what the oligarchy wants is unity in conformity.
Together with, and partly as a result of, its attacks on the press, it is leaving behind it neither change nor development, but more of the same rule of the few, even worse poverty, and, as it kept reminding us, the use of State violence and terror against anyone who dared exercise the freedoms the Constitution protects.
The fall of socialist regimes and the restoration of capitalism in many countries in the 1990s provoked the view that the current stage of history is also its last. The adherents of the theory that liberal democracy is the pinnacle of political evolution are correct: individual freedom and self-rule are the prerogatives of all of humanity. But democracy has never been as imperiled as it is today by the tyrants who rule in its name. Despite the economic and social crises that afflict not only the poorest countries of the world but also the wealthiest, no alternative seems to be available, the only prospect being more of the same.
The accreditation of bloggers that Marcos Junior’s choice for Press Secretary (she will also head the Presidential Communication Operations Office or PCOO) is planning is not new. It was also considered by her predecessor, but abandoned because of problems over which bloggers would join the Malacañang Press Corps in covering the President.
The Easter Sunday Moreno-Lacson-Gonzales debacle is making it clear to anyone with at least a double-digit IQ who the true candidates of the opposition are, and, incidentally, who is succeeding in convincing the electorate that the right leaders are those who can competently address the many problems of the terrible present and lead this country to a hopeful future. It could be a major turning point in one of the most crucial Philippine elections in decades.
If there is any lesson to be drawn from PDP-Laban’s morphing into its very opposite and from the distinct possibility of Mr. Duterte’s eating his own words once he endorses Marcos Jr., it is how totally without principle and self-serving is the ruling elite — the handful of families and their clones that have monopolized political power in this rumored democracy for nearly a hundred years, and for whom changing sides and parties has been as easy as changing clothes, cars, and residences.
What is behind all these is the unarticulated but nevertheless all-encompassing determination to once more, as during Marcos Sr.’s benighted rule, make the democratization that has been long in coming to this country as difficult if not as impossible of an achievement quite simply because its realization would be contrary to dynastic interests.
A community of readers and supporters that help us sustain our operations through microdonations for as low as $1.