Diwa ng himagsikan

(BALIK-TANAW sa pinaglumaang yugto ng kasaysayan, hawi sa lukut-lukot na pahina ng dyaryong dating pinagsulatan, petsang Pebrero 19, 2001.)
ISANG MADUGONG pakikibaka tungo sa pagbagsak ng naghaharing uri.
Ito ang klasikong bigay kahulugan sa katagang rebolusyon o himagsikan. Kahulugan na umusbong mula sa pagkalas sa Inang Inglatera ng 13 nagkaisang kolonya ng Amerika noong 1776, at sa pag-aklas sa Pransiya laban kay Louis XVI noong 1789.
Naging modelo rin ng klasikong kahulugan ang himagsikang Sobyet ni Lenin noong 1917, ang digmaang sibil sa Tsina noong dekada ’40 na pinagwagian ni Mao, at ang tagumpay ni Castro at Guevara sa Cuba noong 1959.
Hindi natatapos ang himagsikan sa pagbagsak ng naghaharing uri. Sa kaisipang Marxista-Leninista-Maoista, nakaukit ang pangangailangan ng isang patuloy na himagsikan, kaipala’y upang harangin ang likas na pagnanasa ng mga ibinagsak na makabalik muli sa poder at sa rurok ng pamamahala sa estado. Sa wikang Ingles: the need for a continuing revolution to block counter-revolution by the reactionary forces, both foreign and home-grown.
Ang reaksyonaryong puwersa ang pinakamasidhing kalaban ng himagsikan. Ito ang sagabal na bibigo, sisilat o kikitil sa kaganapan ng tagumpay ng himagsikan: ang pagtaas ng antas ng pamumuhay ng masa. Na matutupad lamang kung ang liderato ng pamahalaan ay manggagaling mismo sa kanilang hanay.
Suriin natin ang ilang aspeto ng kasaysayan.
Hindi natapos ang himagsikan sa Amerika nang isuko kay Washington ni Cornwallis ang lahat ng puwersang Ingles sa Yorktown, Virginia noong 1781 gayong ganap nang naglaho ang tangan ni George III sa 13 nagkaisang estado.
Bagama’t itinadhana ng Declaration of Independence ng mga estadong ito na ang lahat ng tao ay nilalang ng Diyos na pantay-pantay, hindi kasali dito ang may 650,000 aliping Itim, 250,000 aliping bayad-utang, at 300,000 katutubong Amerikano o Indyan na noo’y naninirahan sa mga kolonya. Pati na ang mga kababaihan ay hindi sakop ng pahayag ng kasarinlan.
Kinailangan pa ang Emancipation Proclamation ni Lincoln at ang digmaang sibil noong 1861-1864 o kulang-kulang 100 taon mula Himagsikang 1776 upang mapalaya ang mga Itim sa pagka-alipin.
Kinailangan pa ang martsa ni Martin Luther King at ang kanyang talumpating I Have a Dream sa Washington, D.C. noong 1963 o 100 taon na naman mula kay Lincoln upang maging ganap ang pagsasa-batas ng kalayaan ng mga Itim at maging kapantay ng mga Puti sa mga karapatan.
Ang kada-100 taon na mga kaganapan na yaon ang maituturing na milestones in the continuing revolution sa Amerika. (Na masasabing nagkaroon ng sukdulang kaganapan sa pagkahalal kay Obama bilang unang Itim na pangulo ng Estados Unidos noong 2008).
Iba naman ang kinahinatnan ng himagsikan sa Pransiya. Pinugutan ng ulo si Louis XVI at kanyang reynang Marie Antoinette. Ang mga naghahari at nagpaparing uri – monarkiya at simbahan – ay binawian ng poder, ari-arian, pati na rin buhay.
Sa pagkawala ng aristokratang hanay, uring burgis ang namayani, naghari at nang-api sa masang Pranses. Ginipit ang mga unyong manggagawa, sinupil ang karapatan ng mga maliliit at tuwirang nilapastangan ang adhikain ng himagsikan – liberte, egalite, fraternite.
Naghari ang lagim, namayani ang sindak sa reign of terror – na kumitil sa buhay ng daan-daang mamamayan mula sa iba’t ibang sector ng lipunan. Sumiklab ang pag-aalsa at malawakang kaguluhan na nagbigay daan sa isang golpe militar na nagbunga sa pagbulusok ni Napoleon Bonaparte na siyang nakapagpatahimik sa bansa at nagpanumbalik sa monarkiya sa pamamagitan ng kanyang pagkorona sa kanyang sarili bilang emperador.
Si Lincoln at Napoleon, pati na rin sina Lenin, Mao at Castro – magkakaiba ng pananaw, paninindigan, pamamaraan at landasin subalit lahat sila’y tinaguriang mga bayani ng kasaysayan dahil sa kanilang kahalagahan sa critical moment sa buhay ng kanilang bansa. Ito ay ayon sa Kanluraning kaisipan na pinasikat ni Arnold Toynbee sa kanyang A Study of History.
Tunghayan naman natin ang sarili nating kasaysayan.
Sa isang talata ng kanyang epikong Bayang Malaya ay ipinaloob ni Ka Amado Hernandez ang kasaysayan ng Pilipinas: “Nagsuot ng kalmeng bigay ng Espanya, kalmen nang lumaon ay naging kadena. At itong Amerika na bagong katoto ang dala’y de-lata, laya ang kinuha ininom ang bayang parang Coca-Cola.”
Isang naunsyaming rebolusyon ang Himagsikang 1896 dahil inagaw ng mga Amerikano ang tagumpay mula sa ating mga Pilipino.
Sa EDSA noong 1986 ay ipinangalandakan na nagkaroon na ng kaganapan ang 1896. Maliban sa pagkarambol lamang ng mga numero, ito ay isang paglapastangan sa kasaysayan.
Ang pagkakaroon ng EDSA Dos ang malinaw na patunay na wala ngang himagsikang nangyari noong 1986. At wala ring himagsikang naganap sa EDSA nitong 2001. Hindi dahil sa walang dumanak na dugo. Kundi dahil walang naganap na pagbabago. Lalo’t higit walang pagbuti sa antas ng buhay ng mga mamamayan.
Ang naganap ay isang rigodon lamang kung saan mukha lamang ang nagkaroon ng palitan sa liderato ng bayan. Mula sa isang naghaharing uri, isinalin ang poder sa kanilang kauri. Sabi nga ng aktibista noong 1986: “Kumaripas ng takbo ang lahi ni Barabas, pumalit nama’y lipi ni Hudas.”
Ano ang nagbago?
Lalo na nitong pagtalaga sa panguluhan ni Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Masdan ang mga nakapaligid kay Arroyo: sabwatang militar-trapo. Nasaan na ang mga karaniwang mamamayan, pesante’t proletaryo, silang umaklas at umalma upang mapatalsik si Estrada?
Tingnan ang tunguhin ng rehimeng Arroyo: globalisasyon – ang bagong bihis ng imperyalismo. Ano ang mahihita ng mga tao sa muling paghahari ng aristokrata’t oligarko?
Tama si Mao. Ang masa, ang masa lamang ang tunay na bayani. Ito ang Asyanong paninindigan na umiiral din sa mga bansang Third World na gumigiyagis sa tindi ng kahirapan at panunupil sa mga karapatang pantao na hagkis ng mga papet na tigreng papel ng globalisasyon, ng mga berdugo ng kapitalismo, ng mga enkargado ng pyudalismo.
Ang tanong: Kailan pahahalagaan ang kabayanihan ng masa at gawing puhunan sa pambansang pamunuan tungo sa tunay na kalayaan, pagka-pantay-pantay at ganap na kaunlaran ng bayan? Sa isa pang EDSA? Gasgas at pulpol na ang kaisipang ito? Kailan pa tayo matututo?
Wala sa EDSA ang himagsikang Pilipino. Pagtibayin ang puso, kasama. Tungo sa panibago at pina-igting na pakikibaka.

What miracle?

“THEY ARE undoing a miracle.”
So was the recounted-out Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio headlined in the newspaper that has pimp-primed him since the start of his political career.
Panlilio was of course referring to the Commission on Election’s Second Division in its declaration of former Board Member Lilia Pineda as the winner in the 2007 gubernatorial polls.
Panlilio – along with his greatly-reduced myrmidons – has always claimed his victory in 2007 as a miracle.
“This is not about me but about the people’s crusade. This is a divine crusade because God worked to unite us to work for good changes in our province…Kapampangans of good conscience cannot accept these accusations that we cheated our way to victory in 2007. We did not cheat. They are undoing a miracle.” Thus were the unsettled governor’s ululations quoted in the Panlilio-patronizing paper.
“I wonder what grade this dispensation-seeking, suspended priest got in Theology, or if he learned anything from his four years in that course.”
So sneered an almost-priest upperclassman of mine at the Mater Boni Consilii Seminary who went past third year Theology before seeing the inevitability that “it is not good for man to be alone,” and promptly sought the woman destined to restore his ribs to completion.
What has Panlilio’s studies in Theology got to do with the result of the Comelec recount?
“Too bad you reached only as far as Rhetorics, too removed from Theology to instantly see what I meant.” Condescended this effete snob of an intellectual.
Okay, educate ignorant me.
“Panlilio’s statement of ‘undoing a miracle’ is a contradiction in terms. A miracle undone is no miracle at all.”
Aha, I get the drift. Panlilio called the dramatic increase in quarry collections at the start of his term as a miracle. When the collections went on a downward spiral soon after, I wrote: “The miracle is a mirage.”
“No miracle, but a mirage there indeed. By its very essence, a miracle is an intervention of the divine, of God Herself working through, above, without or against created nature. Hence, even the miracles attributed to saints are the handiwork of God, the saints being mere instruments. What God has done, his mere creatures cannot undo. To believe otherwise is a negation of God.”
That’s veering toward agnosticism.
“Wrong. That’s an instance of atheism.”
Now, we’re talking. So what’s your take on the philosopher James Keller’s words: "The claim that God has worked a miracle implies that God has singled out certain persons for some benefit which many others do not receive implies that God is unfair…If God intervenes to save your life in a car crash, then what was He doing in Auschwitz?"
“So why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? So they can be even better. “
Spoken like a true theologian there, philosophy be damned.
“In Panlilio’s case, the context of miracles adhere to the so-called Littlewood’s law: ‘That miracles do not exist, but are rather examples of low probability events that are bound to happen by chance from time to time.’”
Yes, apropos Panlilio’s “miracles,” I recall some readings to the effect that miracles are wielded by highly creative storytellers, devised to embellish the hero or the incident they – the kwentistas – themselves create so as to make them larger than life to effect the strongest impression, indeed, to shock and awe their audience.
“They are undoing a miracle.” The only revelation there is the face of Panlilio’s highly imaginative storyteller.
Undoing a miracle? There’s only Panlilio’s questioned governorship undone here. And that’s no miracle.

Growing old

NO, IT’S not all about graying hair. I remember my father all salt-and-pepper in his 30’s. And yes, good friend Lincoln Baluyut, once The Voice publisher now Canada immigrant having a shockful of silver streaks in his early 20’s.
Nor does it solely concern an expanding forehead. Generations removed from mine already display shining pates.
The physiological changes do become more pronounced, I concede. The second or third chin and the mid-section bulge become great sources of jokes for the kids. The specs get either thicker or duo-fold, doble vista, that is. But not the double-vision kind of dwRW’s Deng Pangilinan. Tiredness comes easy. Sleep, at mid-morning, even easier.
But the greater changes that come with aging are on the emotional plane. It simply is supremely difficult to let go. To grow gracefully and act graciously old.
Holding on to the last vestiges of youth, you still treat your prep-school grandson like an infant, and your keep tabs on your college son’s late-night comings. To their consternation, both.
You start growing your thinning hair long. Reviving your flower-power days of psychedelic rage. At one point, you even consider renewing your horticultural talent with the beloved plant of your youth, the five-fingered cannabis sativa.
Finding no solace there, you morph into a curmudgeon. Fixed one-track mind. Fast in judgment. Slow in forgiveness. Easy to resentment. Hard and obstinate in opinion of others. The kids grimacing every time you shout “Stupid monkey” at just every driver on the road.
A digression. No gender discrimination here. But one point has to be cited on the great divide between men and women growing old.
An aging woman, finding herself unattractive to men, turns to God. See the number of manangs going to early morning Mass?
An aging man, finding his aging wife unattractive, turns to young sweet things. See the world full of DOMs with willing YDGs, that’s young gold diggers, dummy. Trophy wives, they are called too.
In recent years though, the gender chasm has narrowed. As I have written in articles past, a large number of aging women have traded the church velo for Vicky Belo. And providing some equalizer in the gender game is the ballroom dancing craze and its resident DI’s or “attorneys.” Wrinkled matrons tripping the night fantastic, if not erotic, with dashing swains. Toupeed chaps swinging, sashaying with succulent young jezebels.
Back to track. Shucks, if this is the way of growing old, who wouldn’t desire to die young?
I remember – that word again, truly remembering is for the old. Anyways, I remember an essay I wrote in college Creative Writing – nearly 40 years back – on my greatest obsession in life. To die at an early age, I penned. So that I shall experience the ultimate in greatness: that of being young, gifted, and dead.
I am not young anymore. I wasted a lot of the little gifts I have. I am not yet dead. I am aging. And trying to come to grips with it.
It is not all bitterness there is to growing old though. So long as one also grows up. There is a truism to that clichéd birthday wish to grow in grace as one grows in age.
So I still greet myself happy birthday then. Thanks to all who remember. And find me still one chap to be happy with.

Panlilio's machinery

NO WAY for Eddie T. Panlilio to win the governorship in 2010.
So declared the excellent political analyst Ashley Manabat, editor of Luzon Banner, as early as the day Panlilio filed his certificate of candidacy.
Ashley based his prognosis on the departure of the civil society groups from the Panlilio camp, his loss of his purported biggest campaign contributor Madame Lolita Hizon and her faithful congregation of over 5,000, and his enmity with the local government executives, among many others.
It was around that time too that the senior citizens of Pampanga gave Panlilio a big but empty egg in terms of meeting their needs and aspirations, and a youth representative publicly declaring he wasted his vote for Panlilio in 2007 and would most definitely vote for “Nanay Baby” in 2010. Thus buttressed was Ashley’s analysis.
“The 2007 count put Panlilio ahead of Nanay Baby by only 1,147 votes which, if we believe stories coming out of the Comelec have been overhauled with Nanay winning by over 2,400 votes,” Ashley says. “If that is all Panlilio can manage, with all his supporters then, what would he be left with now that many of his supporters are gone?”
No way for Panlilio to win the governorship in 2010, indeed?
I hate to contradict the man once mistaken for the Maguindanao ogre Andal Ampatuan but I don’t believe Panlilio is a push-over in 2010.
He may have the moves of a bumbling carnival fool, but Panlilio is all astute, calculating politician deep within.
His constant and consistent sniping at President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo may have made him a persona non grata to Malacanang and the GMA faithful but it endeared him to the Noynoy Aquino’s yellow horde now taking the whole country by storm.
With that, Panlilio has a formidable warhorse to ride into battle. And a formidable partymate too – in City of San Fernando Mayor Oscar Rodriguez – to flank him where the most number of votes are.
No deus ex machina but a political machinery – outside the Liberal Party which, unarguably is more form than substance in Pampanga at this time – Panlilio has crafted right under the very noses of his critics and detractors, the sangguniang panlalawigan not excluded.
The committees and councils Panlilio assiduously established form the structures of that machinery, the budget of the Office of the Governor for “non-office” and special program allocations make their readily available funding. Consider:
The Pampanga Agricultural Development Council with the Office of the Governor’s P25 million for “agri-business and post-harvest facilities” can well anchor Panlilio’s bid for the farmers’ and the fishers’ votes.
Already running literally, for the Panlilio candidacy most obviously, is the Pampanga Youth Welfare Organization. Where its funds are coming from? It is right there in Panlilio’s executive order for the PYWO creation – PESO, the Provincial Employment Services Office that serves as some sort of a mother unit, if not a nanny to the PYWO.
Our moles at the Capitol say the PYWO is composed of the beneficiaries of the training and leadership and worship services conducted in Tarlac last year by the His Life in the City Inc. church where still-putative provincial administrator Atty. Vivian Dabu worships and to which the Capitol paid P650,000.
In the PYWO Panlilio has his very own young stormtroopers to match up with the sangguniang kabataan.
Panlilio’s estrangement from the senior citizens belonging to Linda Gaddi-David’s Pampanga chapter of the National Federation of Senior Citizens’ Associations of the Philippines, is by no means his total shut-out from the ranks of the elderly. In the Office of Senior Citizens Affairs, Panlilio has his own loyal following.
The Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and Industry may have severed ties with the Capitol in the wake of Panlilio’s run-ins with his once most ardent supporter, Rene Romero, PamCham’s president. But Panlilio has since formed a multi-sectoral governance council – a puny, bastardized version of the City of San Fernando’s multi-awarded and fully functional MSGC – that is business-based.
Panlilio created “layers upon layers” – as Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao said – of committees and councils that practically usurp the functions, if not the funds, of mandated Capitol offices.
The only rhyme and reason we see in their creation is the advancement of Panlilio’s political interests.
Shrewd.