Without Cory

“CORY AILMENT seen as setback to protest movement.”
Thus cried a headline of the Philippine Daily Inquirer in direct quote of Senate Minortiy Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr.
“The ailment of Cory Aquino will cause the protest movement to limp like a person still mobile but hobbled by a pinched nerve…The mobilization of people may become more difficult.” So was quoted the Cory administration’s interior and local government secretary. Yeah, Nene of the (in)famous pogrom of all sitting local government executives and their replacements with OICs at the start of Cory’s revolutionary government in the immediate post-EDSA Uno period.
Cory is a “potent rallying figure” thus her absence in the protest movement would create a large vacuum. So admitted the opposition. So agreed the administration, not without some sigh of relief hidden in some hypocritical civility of “let us all pray for Cory.”
The “Cory situation” vis-à-vis the anti-GMA forces underscores the infirmity of the protest movement, or for that matter, of any political movement in the Philippines.
Again, I refer to the perfect characterization of Philippine politics made by the most astute Filipino politician that ever lived, Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, thus: “Populist, personalist, individualist.”
The popular, the personal, the individual make the core body of any political movement in the Philippines. Never the cause.
The movement’s rise or fall is totally dependent on the fortune or misfortune of the individual. Thus Marcos’ Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, Miriam’s People Reform Party, Roco’s Aksyon Demokratiko, and in the distant past, Manglapus’ Party for Philippine Progress, Cabangbang’s Philippine Statehood USA, and De los Santos’ Lapiang Malaya. To name but a few, that many of you could not even remember.
Even so-called cause-oriented groups are that only in name. Like the political parties, their attestations are no more than pretensions, being ever personality-centered and never cause-oriented.
Celebrated individuals, not noble causes, become the rallying points of the movement.
So when that individual upon whom the cause is arrogated becomes indisposed, the movement falters, the heat of passion for it flickers, the followers lose interest.
History shows that successful movements, even revolutionary ones , are solidly grounded on causes. It is the cause that solely makes the rallying point. The personalities serve as the coordinate points.
Not even so charismatic a revolutionary as Che Guevara succeeded in fomenting the Bolivian revolution with him as the rallying point. Che failed in rousing the Bolivians not so much for their lack of faith in him as for the absence of a cause to rally them.
Everyone in Bolivia in1967 was poor. There were no oligarchs from whose stranglehold the people should be emancipated. There were no large landowners whose lands needed to be distributed to the people. Even the military government was not as repressive, as corrupt nor as unpopular as its civilian predecessor. So assessed an American political think tank at the time.
Now, think why and how the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army managed to survive through all these years, despite the government’s mailed fist approach to the insurgency, its all-out war against the “communist terrorists;” despite all those land reform programs to “emancipate” the peasants, thus dissuading them from joining the insurgents; despite the capture and subsequent “rehabilitation” of the CPP-NPA leaders, from Dante Buscayno to Rudy Salas to Romy Kintanar to Popoy Lagman; despite the extrajudicial killings of militants.
The answer: the primacy of the cause . Personalities subsume themselves to the cause. Never the other way around. The fate and fortune, especially the misfortune, of the personalities feed, nay, nurture the cause. Here, we are reminded of Che: “Wherever death may surprise us, it is most welcome. Our funeral dirge will be the staccato sound of machine guns and the cries of battle and victory.”
Of all the movements in the country today, only the insurgency can lay claim to that age-old truism that “nobody is indispensable.”
Again Che: “What do the danger and sacrifices of a man or a nation matter, when the destiny of humanity is at stake.”
Now, back to the cause of truth as embraced by the anti-GMA forces: So without Cory, what will Lozada be?