21 Years Ago

Twenty one years ago this Sunday, Filipinos became a proud race after they ousted a dictator who ruled the country for more than 20 years, 14 years of which were under martial law.

Ruled by the barrels of guns, Filipinos could only say yes and amen to the dictates of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos and his generals. Those who dared to say no and defied him, including the late Senators Benigno Aquino and Jose Diokno and many others who included journalists, were thrown into cold prison cells. Worse, many were also tortured and summarily killed, if not made to disappear without a trace. Those were the days when we first heard of extrajudicial killing, which the military termed as “salvaging.”

The critical situation at that time prompted many youths to become activists. Some chose the extreme – they went underground and took up arms.

When Marcos was finally ousted through what has become popularly known as the EDSA Revolution (which others say was actually a people-backed military revolt), many Filipinos thought the country would become a paradise regained. We all were upbeat about our country and its future as we were able to elect our officials and as the press regained its freedom.

But after four presidents took turns to govern us, the ghost of martial law apparently continues to haunt and hound us. We thought extrajudicial killings, for example, were things inherent only under a military regime. But these continue up to now when we are supposed to be more concerned about democracy, responsible governance, and civil liberties.

The European Union, international human rights groups and church organizations, and the UN are now alarmed about how human life has become cheap in this country as activists, journalists, church workers and judges are being eliminated from the face of the earth. The Philippines now ranks second to Iraq, as the most dangerous place for journalists. Just recently, a community editor from southern Philippines was shot to death while taking his early morning coffee. He was the 50^th journalists to be killed since 2001.

Charges of libel also continue to send chills in the spines of many journalists, who dared to expose what the public needed to know about the shenanigans and excesses of some top guns in government.

That extrajudicial killings and threats to journalists continue under a supposed democracy only shows that the country, to paraphrase UN human rights special rapporteur Philip Alston, still has a very long way to go.

So instead of celebrating the return of democracy through that People Power Revolution in 1986, we now have confused and mixed feelings. The difficult and dangerous situation we are in prompts us to extend our mourning and grieving, which we thought ended in February 1986. We still have a very long way to go, indeed.

Send in the Clowns

One senatorial candidate is now being advertised as “gulay ng buhay (vegetable of life)” so “itanim natin siya sa Senado (let’s plant him in the Senate).” This and other political commercials now mix it up with commercials for shampoo, ladies’ napkin, facial oil and lotion, detergents, coffee, liquor, diapers, and other products.

Obviously, the political commercials seek to target the millions of TV viewers who may finally write on their ballots that name on May 14, which they can recall from the repetitive commercial bombardments. And people may just write on their ballots that name that they remember from corny, if not non-sense, political advertisements.

The political commercials don’t necessarily talk about platforms or advocacies. Some commercials just play on the candidates’ names and how they rhyme with senado, for example. With repetition as the strategy, the commercials might work for many voters who don’t really know the capacity and qualities of many candidates. Let’s just hope voters during the election won’t write on their ballots the brand of an underwear or facial oil.

In their commercials, candidates also appear nice, approachable, concerned and sincere. They project themselves as selfless servants with only country and people as their top priority. But that’s alright even if we know that the candidates’ projection is just a put-on since many other commercial products and services are advertised that way anyway.

So we are now in an age when candidates are being marketed like any other commercial product. And viewers may yet judge how much wealth a candidate has by the frequency of his or her commercials. This creates a problem.

Pity the genuinely capable and worthy, but poor candidate who cannot pay for a TV commercial. So again, it’s only those who can afford who continue to lord it over our political landscape.

Apparently, candidates now are pinning their hopes on their TV exposure via commercials after popular TV and movie personalities and basketball stars wormed their way into politics. After a noontime TV show personality first won a seat in the Senate some years ago, for example, Butch Abad of Batanes, who was being endorsed then to run for the Senate, said he should first join a TV show before launching a career in the Senate. He said this when there was only one TV personality in the Senate. Now the Senate is more showbiz-bound than ever.

So now we have what one Manila newspaper described as a political circus. In a circus, the clowns take us for a ride and we are amused while the clowns are (well) clowning around. While the clowns are clowning around, we laugh together with them as we forget that they are making a fool out of us.

Karmic Effect

Many people are now talking about climate change after Al Gore came out with his An Inconvenient Truth documentary. In graphic detail, Gore demonstrated how a 20-foot (6m) rise in the sea level would inundate much of Florida, Shanghai and Holland.

Some environmentalists claim that most of the scenarios in Gore’s documentary were exaggerated. They cite the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent report, which noted an average of 38.5cm sea level rise.

These environmentalists say that the exaggerated scenarios in Gore’s documentary may yet win him an Academy Award. But they say the scenarios have no basis in science. Still, they admitted that sea level rise and global warming are things we should all be concerned about.

Exaggerated or not, rising sea levels, global warming and climate change are as real as the unusual super typhoons the Philippines has experienced in recent years and the unusual floods that submerged New Orleans and recently Jakarta and other parts of Indonesia. Canada and other countries in the Arctic region are now experiencing shorter winters while other parts of the world are reeling from heat waves.

Our planet is getting warmer, say scientists, because of a hole in the ozone layer. There’s a hole there because of too much gas emissions from fossil fuels. The Kyoto Protocol on climate change is supposed to help address this, but the world’s biggest oil consumer and polluter that is the US, refused to sign it. And those who signed it have difficulty reducing their fossil fuel consumption.

Through its space program, the US may yet find another planet where it can evacuate its people. In anticipation of sea levels rising in the future, Japan is now building underwater cities.

In a world ruled by the strong and the mighty in terms of technological and economic capacity, the less fortunate and poor countries may yet perish during the next Great Deluge.

But even if they can land on the moon or can send a rover on Mars, the Americans may not be able to escape from the worst consequence of global warming. Neither can Japan even with its underwater cities. We are still on the same troubled titanic spaceship called planet Earth.

Scientists now acknowledged that the destruction of the ozone and its consequence such as global warming and rising sea levels are not natural phenomena but man-made. Such acknowledgment is an admission of guilt. This is good because we cannot correct a wrong unless we recognize and admit it.

We have abused the only planet we have got through our abusive and consumerist lifestyles and our greed. Now we are reaping the karmic effect of our collective sin.