Protest and Beyond: Reflections on the Philippine Situation Today

Chapter II

PROTEST AND BEYOND: REFLECTIONS ON THE PHILIPPINE SITUATION TODAY

What Is Happening To Our Country?

Not very long before the assassination of Ninoy, and not very far away from his home, an assassination attempt was made on another well-known political figure in the country. The attempt fortunately was not successful, although the intended victim suffered severe wounds and perhaps suffered even more drastically in his political career. Emmanuel Pelaez, the former Vice President of the country and presently a member of the Batasang Pambansa (the National Assembly) lived through that assassination attempt and has become since a "born-again Christian" and a relatively quiet and unheard-of assemblyman. He was at the time of the abortive assassination leading the discussions and the questionings of the so-called coconut levy and of what he then considered to be the sad and unfortunate state of the coconut industry in the country — an industry that to this day is controlled and dominated by a member of the Cabinet and of others who are close to the President.

As Pelaez was being wheeled into the operating room of the hospital where he was taken for emergency treatment, he looked at a ranking police officer who had come to him and poignantly asked, "General, what is happening to our country?" There was a note of surprise in the question. Pelaez has claimed at the time that he did not know of any enemies who would do such a thing to him. He may by now have changed his mind. He has

not since then initiated the discussion of the coconut levy again.

The poignancy and the urgency of the question which he asked of the general was not picked up then, and no untoward reactions were registered to the attempt on his life. The question appropriately was asked of a general, for in the militarized situation in which we live, generals not only hold a lot of power and influence, but also a lot of the information and the knowledge — and certainly the leverage of power — on which so much of what is happening hang.

After August 21, 1983, the question can not be ignored anymore, and the answers to it became also quite focussedly clear. Whatever else one can say about the assassination of Ninoy, one simply must recognize that it galvanized the expression among various sectors of Philippine society of that critical look and anguished anger at the Marcos years, and what had happened to Philippine society during those years. The outbursts of popular adulation of Ninoy which the "tarmac incident" triggered not only "cleared" Ninoy's name of the accusations that this regime had heaped on him; they also catapulted Ninoy into that revered place in Philippine history that the Marcoses have been aspiring for, but which they can not any more even pretend to achieve as a result of Ninoy's death. Whatever claims to greatness the Marcoses entertained died with Ninoy, at the same time that whatever presumed achievements of the New Society can not now be claimed without uncritical questioning, if not even expressions of incredulity, from ever widening circles of Philippine society.

Of Assassins and Social Violence

Of what are assassins made and out of what context do assassinations occur? The English word "assassin" is

traceable to the Arabic "hashshasin" the root of which is "hashish", that very dangerous and infectious hemp the taking of which is prohibited in most countries. The "hashshashin" are literally "hashish" eaters, and the word was first used to refer to a secret order of Moslems who killed Christians at the time of the Crusades under the influence of "hashish."

The assassin, in short, is no ordinary criminal. He or she is not a common killer. The assassin does not kill from personal or individual grievance or motivation. He or she, in fact, may have no personal feelings at all with regard to the act which he or she consummates with utter viciousness. He or she, like the "hashish" eater, is caught in the compelling power of a force or a reason or a cause — an uncontrollable web of violence, if you may — that is beyond him or her, that is larger and more complex than his or her individual will or reason. Assassinations are, to put it differently, patently and unmistakably social and political in character. They are the most concentrated and "telescoped" expressions of social and political violence, targetted at a specific social and political victim. Their victims therefore may or may not be in themselves guilty of any specific crimes; they are hit so viciously and so cold-bloodedly because they represent a social and political cause, or perhaps embody and symbolize a social and political reality. And in our time, they could happen with that masterful expression of technical efficiency and professional dispatch so that their perpetration becomes almost totally devoid of human feelings and consideration. In this sense, the pulling of the trigger of the gun that killed Ninoy represents exactly the same political mode as the pulling of the missile trigger in that Russian plane that mercilessly downed Flight 007 of Korean Airlines not too long ago near the Sakhalin islands. It did not matter that there were 269 innocent passengers in that commercial

airliner. What mattered was what the pilot reported to his homebase: 'Target destroyed!"

Richard Barnett in his Roots of War has written about what he calls the bureaucratization and the almost invisible social roots of violence in our time so that it has become difficult to raise issues of human consideration about it. The requirements of social and political existence, e.g., of national security, interest and stability, are simply presumed to necessitate the most efficient and skillful use of violence, so that in the name of such requirements violence against persons are accepted and adopted as a normal course of political rule and social control, and then implemented with the same professional and technical dispatch that commercial and industrial goods are sold in the market. It is part of a job to be done, and it is plotted in that cold and calculated manner, perhaps around lacquered desks by men wearing vested suits or crisp and creaseless barong tagalogs and then implemented by hit-men at such a distance that its real perpetrators and conceivers can not actually see or feel the human suffering that results. The hit-men in their coldbloodedness and professionalism are also often hit, and become what one commentator has aptly described as "footnotes of history."

This normalization and bureaucratization of social Violence is at the heart of militarization, and it is integral to the ideology of what some have called the national security state, and others, repressive-developmentalist regimes. The ever increasing and expanding insertion of the military into wider and wider areas of public life and the equally increasing dependence upon the use of force in order to maintain stability and extend legitimacy are indelible and inevitable ingredients of this political phenomenon. Within it and in its context, assassins and assassinations are common, if not normal, features of political life. Martial Law, in my view, whether it is called Philippine-style democracy, or constitutional

authoritarianism, or crisis government, is an adoption in the Philippine context of this politics of bureaucratized violence.

It should never be thought therefore that Ninoy was the first, the only, and the last to be assassinated. Neither was his assassination the first and the last to be blamed on the Communists, or perhaps to remain unsolved. There have been many others before him who have died in broad daylight, or who simply disappeared quietly in the night. Bobby de la Paz, Dulag MacLiing, and Edgar Jopson — to name only a few and the more well-known — went before him. The four Lakbayan marchers who disappeared after that long historic march and whose bodies were later dug-up from a shallow grave in Cavite, and Lina Lazaro, the wife of Rolando Galman, the "designated" assassin of Ninoy, — again to name only a few — have also gone or disappeared after him. Were these all "sacrifices" by the military to the "unknown gods" of fighting the Communist conspiracy, or could they be, on the contrary, brave "sacrifices" for the forces of opposition to the present regime?

Yellow Ribbons in the Air

What marked Ninoy's assassination from the rest was perhaps the fact that it sparked widespread protests and demonstrations all over the country, at the same time that it provided the occasion for the unmasking of the deep etches of crisis into which the country has been thrown and the equally deepened hues of political struggle which now faces us as a people.

The protests were magnificently dramatic and imaginative in their form, so multi-sectoral in their constituency, and clear in the aspirations they entoned. I was in the large procession that marked the ninth day of mourning of Ninoy's death. It was large — at least two kilometers long of people lined up about eight abreast. It

was participated in by students and youth, faculty from various academic institutions, workers and urban poor, representatives from the various political opposition groups, professional men and women, people in management as well as people in labor, and varied representations from the religious sector. There were those who were singing 'The Impossible Dream," others who were shouting "Makibaka, Huwag matakot" — which was the shout of the demonstrations of the First Quarter Storm in the early seventies, and still others who were singing religious hymns or chanting their rosaries. The demand was plain and simple: "Marcos, Resign!"

I was also at the rally on September 21, that commemorated the first-month anniversary of Ninoy's assassination. Ironically, the date coincided with the date in which Martial Law was declared, and which since 1972, has been declared a holiday to be celebrated as a "Day of Thanksgiving." Whatever celebration of "thanksgiving" there was this time — I heard later there was a "thanksgiving mass" at the well-guarded presidential palace — was completely drowned by what was dubbed as the largest public demonstration against the Marcos regime ever, and which instead commemorated the day as a "Day of Sorrow."

It was very large. Five large columns of marchers from five designated gathering area in different parts of Manila converged at the historic Liwasang Bonifacio — a large square in front of the Manila Post Office — and by the time the marchers had all arrived, the place was filled as it has never been filled before, to use the description of one reporter. Estimates of the crowd ranged from 500 thousand to 1.2 million people. It was again multi-sectoral. Speakers at the rally represented the traditional opposition groups, students and youth, labor, the health sector (nurses, doctors and other health workers), lawyers' organizations, the religious sector, and even the entertainment sector. The tone of speeches

and of the banners that were waved however had changed. In addition to the sounds and signs of "Marcos Resign," there were now the equally dominant sounds and signs of "Dismantle the U.S. — Marcos Dictatorship." The "Pledge of Commitment" was led at the end by Gory Aquino, the widow of Ninoy, and participated in by the large crowd with their clenched fists.

I was not in the smaller but more militant rally that broke away from that larger gathering on September 21, which later that day marched towards the Malacañang Palace (the Presidential Palace) but I listened late into the night to the "live' coverage of it by Radio Veritas. this "splinter" march was made up mostly of students, and sought to enter the Palace by way of Mendiola Avenue, that historic avenue where in the early seventies many died and were wounded as students tried to assault the Palace and were met and repulsed by military units and Palace guards. As it was in the early seventies, so it was in 1983. The march was met by truncheoned — and armed — military units, and before the night was over, at least 12 persons had been killed and hundreds had been wounded. As the battle of Mendiola raged, other rallies were being held in various parts of the city. Bonfires burned in many of the main thoroughfares of the city. The Kadiwa center on España street — one of the First Lady's projects — was ransacked. Traffic in most of Manila stopped.

Mendiola III — as the event was dubbed — was violent. Picturing the bonfires and the clashes between students and police, Newsweek devoted its next cover story on Marcos, and asked, "How Long Will Marcos Last?" Mendiola III indicated among other things that underneath or alongside the expressions of peaceful protest, there was also rage, and the manifestations of that rage could no longer be contained.

Meanwhile, in between and after these big demonstrations, 'yellow rain," or the "confetti revolution" as it has

been called, began to fall. It began in the usually placid and seemingly uninvolved Makati area — the Philippines' Wall Street. And it continued almost daily for months thereafter. The Ermita district joined in, and later on also Chinatown. The Philippines' business community had been roused into action. And in one meeting of Makati businessmen, a statement was produced, addressed to the President and to the nation, in which the businessmen pointed out succinctly that "our problem" is not "economic but political," that the economic difficulties that the country is experiencing has at its root a crisis of political leadership that now needs the surgical cure of the present leadership stepping down.

Other rallies continued months after August 21,1983. The women had their days of protests. The lawyers, the doctors and other professional groups had theirs, too. Students continued the pressure on various fronts. And so did the teachers.

Then there were the "long runs" and the 'long marches." On January 27, 1984, on the day of the National Plebiscite, a group of "joggers" led by Agapito "Butz" Aquino, a brother of Ninoy, started a protest run from Concepcion, Tarlac, Ninoy's hometown, that was to end at the airport tarmac where Ninoy was shot. Picking up other runners as they passed through the towns and villages, the runners were "molested" and harassed at various points in their almost 150 kilometer route by the military, who had once more raised the issue of national security and infiltration of the run by Communist and subversive elements. As the runners reached the boundary of Metro Manila, they were finally stopped by a phalanx of military police and disallowed to continue. Many reasons were given for the stoppage. The question of subversive infiltration was raised again — and the runners were subjected to a body search for firearms.

And the run, they were told, would be a public hazard and would interrupt Manila traffic.

If the run was stopped however, the runners were not cowed. Camping at the Meycauayan Church just outside of Metro Manila, they vowed that they would persist and would sit it out in Meycauayan until they were able to reach their finish line at the Manila International Airport tarmac. Spontaneously, as the news of the stoppage of the run circulated, thousands began to give assistance to the intrepid runners. Food and medical supplies were immediately provided by people from all walks of life. Thousands more began to gather to join the march, Metro Manila tensed-up once more as the confrontation between public and popular pressure and military power mounted.

The authorities relented, and the military gave way. By the time the runners entered Manila and ran through E. de Los Santos Avenue, the runners had swelled into the thousands, and the crowds that welcomed them numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Not all of the runners were allowed to reach the airport tarmac. Twenty-one of them however did. And there, on the spot where the inspirer of the run was brutally shot, they renewed their pledge to continue their fight against the Marcos dictatorship, and its supporters.

The 'Tarlac to tarmac" run was followed, about a month later, by the now historic Lakad ng Bayan para sa Kalayaan, Lakbayan, in short (People's March for Freedom). Starting from two opposite points, north and south of Manila, the marchers walked towards Manila into their converging point at the Luneta Grandstand. Made up of workers and peasants, men and women from the various professions, and students and youth, the two columns of marchers inched their way toward their common finish line, and like the 'Tarlac to tarmac" run, gathered participants as they passed the towns and villages. The march was peaceful, though clearly more

militant. The "Tarlac to tarmac" run was made to symbolize protest against, and to ignore, the National Plebiscite. Lakbayan was made to give focal expression to the call for a militant and active boycott of the coming May 14 elections for the Batasang Pambansa (National Assembly). As in the 'Tarlac to tarmac" run, by the time the two columns reached the Manila area, hundreds of thousands gathered to welcome them. Thousands more contributed food and medicine, and money for the support of the marchers. Marching under the heat of the now scorching summer sun, not a few of the marchers fell sick. Most of them however reached their destination, and many more joined as they went along. By the time they reached their converging point at the Luneta, on Ash Wednesday, where thousands welcomed them, and sang with them Bayan Ko (My Country) and the National Anthem to indicate their love and commitment to their country and people, they have indicated with their sacrifice a crucial point in which spontaneous protest and demonstrations now become more organized political action.

Throughout all these outpouring of popular disquiet, disgust and rage Marcos remained. He remains, he says, because he has "a covenant with the people" to remain. This covenant with the people he made and won through elections he "won," through the "constitutionally-authorized" declaration of Martial Law in 1972, through many more plebiscites, referenda and elections which he and his ruling KBL party "won" by lopsided majorities of more than 90 per cent of the vote. And as of this writing, he aims at cementing that covenant further with another "win" in the forthcoming May 14, 1984 Batasang Pambansa elections. And as he remains, the confrontation between intransigent, if not insolent, power, buttressed by the organized support of the military and the "friendship" of the United States, and popular discontent and rage mounts to inexorably

constitute the heightening crisis that confronts us now as a nation.

From Catharsis to Crisis

The symptoms and the ingredients of this heightening crisis which has engulfed our nation have by now become obvious to most, if not all, of us. How, for example, can anyone of us remain unconscious of the manner in which our economy has been mismanaged, our resources spent in waste, and our material well-being sacrificed by those who presently wield political power? Martial rule, with its sacrifice of human rights, civil liberties, and with its patently authoritarian components, has been rationalized as a necessity, and a temporary adjustment, for the kind of quick economic development that our nation so badly needed, so that what we have embarked upon is some kind of a unique Filipino-style of political democracy and economic planning that will bring about quick economic growth for our country. Now, we know and experience what that quick economic growth is all about. As one protest sign has so graphically and pointedly put it, it means "utang dito, utang doon, utang lahat, orang utang" (borrowing here, borrowing there, borrowing everywhere, orang utang). And this "utang" (borrowing or debt) — which by conservative estimates has ballooned to over 25 billion dollars from such international lending institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) — has meant a devalued peso, soaring prices, increasingly empty pockets and stomachs, and an unmanageable foreign debt, the payment of which requires that we borrow some more.

People have warned us about the pitfalls of dependency and of "dollar imperialism," but few listened, for the simple reason that these are "radical" and "subversive" words. Now, we know what they mean and

what effects they entail in our economic life and in our sovereignty as a people. They mean literally being in "hock," and the only immediate way by which we can get out of the devastating consequences of that is to be in "hock" some more. The pitiful sight of our Finance Minister and our Central Bank governor shuttling between Manila and Washington D.C., desperately trying to work out the rescheduling of our debt payments and begging for more stand-by credit, is what dependency means. It means, further, untold suffering to an already emaciated population while "new oligarchs" wallow in and spend wantonly the new wealth that has been bestowed upon them as a result of their loyalty and closeness to the "gods" of this Philippine-style democracy.

The foreign debt of 25 billion dollars, or more, in other words, will have to go up before it could even begin to go down, if ever it will begin to go down, and because there is no way we can even begin to deal with that debt and its debilitating consequences on our national economy and well-being except by borrowing some more, we experience the equally dismal and embarrassing spectacle of International Monetary Fund (IMF) personnel periodically visiting us and looking over our books because we have gone down so low as to even commit the "mistake" of overstating our foreign reserves by over 600 million dollars so that our credit capacity could look better.

The ballyhooed Filipino-style of democracy and economic development, in short, is little more than the giving away of national sovereignty to foreign control, and little more than what many writers have referred to as "crony capitalism." In addition to its almost total dependency upon foreign lending institutions, it means the parceling out of economic favors and of the levers of economic power to well-chosen and faithful friends, relatives and associates, and then designating to these "most-favored-people" choice contracts, credit-lines, and

government financial assistance. Faithfulness and loyalty, not necessarily competence and efficiency in the management of their enterprises, are the key to their existence. Thus, cronies, like those whom the gods favored in Greek mythology often fall as quickly as they rise.

What has happened to Delta Motors, the Philippine distributors of Toyota cars and one of the fastest rising and largest industrial conglomerates in the country in recent years, and of its fabled basketball team, the Toyota Super-Corollas, is an example of what happens when one falls from the grace of the "gods" of this Filipino-style economic development. The Toyota basketball team was disbanded recently, and with its disbandment and sale, came also the "fall" of such basketball "gods" as Robert Jaworski and Francis Arnaiz, two of the more well-known and well-paid professional basketball players in the country. Reacting to the manner in which they have been sold and disbanded without their knowledge, the two players suddenly realized that they are not "gods" after all, but only, in their own words, "candies " and "cattle" that can be shuttled from one owner to another. The plea of the two for "morality "in the manner in which they should be treated by Delta Motors management is not only funny and misplaced. It is downright pathetic in a situation where over 4000 Toyota workers have been relieved of their work, and where there are no more Toyota cars to sell, because Ricardo Silverio, Delta's President of the Board, has fallen from the graces of the "real gods" of Philippine society, his credit line is gone, and the Philippine National Bank has began foreclosure proceedings against his corporate holdings. As a result, Delta Motors and its popular Toyota team have sunk, even more quickly than the quick rise to prominence that they made a few years back. Toyota players meanwhile who had began to think of themselves as "gods" now realize

that they are only "candies" and "cattle" that can be sold "per kilo" (by the kilo).

In a dependent economy and in a situation of "crony capitalism," that is what has happened not only to Jaworski and Amaiz but to all of us: candies and cattle in the selling-block of industry and capitalism. How sad and how pathetic that Jaworski and Arnaiz realize only now what hundreds of thousands of workers have been experiencing all the time.

If the economic front has been bad, it is probably worse in the political front. The two fronts are in fact not separable, even when the government, and Marcos, in particular, tries very hard to separate them. As the Makati businessmen have rightly put it, the problem is not mainly economic, but political, and, I might add, political in a very critical way. The fact that Ninoy was assassinated while in the hands of military escorts — and more and more evidence piles up to indicate that indeed the military might have been involved in the killing — and the fact that shortly after that killing the government came up with a version that now must be considered ridiculous by all, including perhaps the five members of the Fact Finding Commission that has been set up to investigate the case, put, I think, the final screw on the credibility of this regime, although that loss of credibility has been going on, if not gone, for quite some time now. For some time before the Ninoy assassination, people have talked about political killings and assassinations. Many, however, considered these "leftist" and "subversive" propaganda. When Ninoy was shot in coldblood, before an international audience, claims of military "salvaging" of opposition people, of how the military has become a "private army," and of the "reign of terror" by which the regime has maintained and continues to maintain itself, simply could not be stonewalled any more. That the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and a group of former justices and others of "know

probity and integrity" who were appointed by the President to investigate the Aquino killing have had to be disbanded because few gave them the trust and credibility to give impartial judgment and investigation of the Aquino crime simply drove home the point that the integrity and credibility of this regime is gone.

Few among us, and fewer still I am sure in other countries, probably noticed the political implications of the "disqualification" of our national basketball team at the Asian Basketball Championship in Hongkong in late 1983. The embarrassment of landing only in 9th place is inconceivable in times past. More than what the debacle did to our basketball egos however is what it said about the credibility of our political institutions. Passports that we issued — in our words, the seal of citizenship that we give to our people — to some "instantly naturalized" American players with whom we wanted to regain "lost basketball glory" were questioned, and the word of one of our high government officials were not given credibility by nothing more than the basketball officials of our Asian neighbors. If Philippine passports and citizenship that our government have granted have become questionable, which of the rest of our political institutions and processes remain credible? Our electoral processes? Our courts? Is it any wonder that when the National Plebiscite was held in January 27, 1984, few bothered to discuss or even know about the issues in that exercise, and more attention was given to whether people voted or boycotted?

There has not been any public outcry over that embarrassing decision of the Asian Basketball Confederation over the status of our basketball team in Hongkong, and I suspect that the reason for this is that deep in our hearts, basketball-crazy Filipinos as we are, there is disbelief if not disgust over the manner in which Philippine citizenship is so easily vested in some "imported " players in order to regain basketball prominence.

Such "manipulations" however should not be a surprise to those who have been discerning of the political habits of the time. In basketball, as in national elections, "there is no substitute to victory," and "there is no substitute to Marcos," as far as the ruling party is concerned, even if that means putting into question our political and national identity, even if that means in our national life the maintenance of an inept and ineffectual one-man rule, even if that means the increasing and blatantly obvious militarization of our society, and even if that means the emaciation of those rights and institutions which we have so painfully and slowly nurtured through the years of struggle for our nationhood. Most of us by now know that Martial Law has had very little to do with national development, or with a "democratic revolution" that Marcos outlined in one of his many so-called writings. It has been concerned all along with what a political scientist has referred to as "regime survival," and indeed, it is the very survival of that regime and the outbursts that must now accompany its going that is now at stake in the political horizon in the coming months and years ahead.

The cultural manifestation of this crisis in our national life is equally debilitating. Our cultural legacies, the artifacts of our past and present, the creative inventions of our human spirits, even the sacred grounds of our forebears and the rites and rituals of our religious faiths, have become converted into exotica for the tourist trade, mighty and necessary earners of that much-needed foreign currency on which so much of our economy depends, and on which the stability of our present political administration relies. Our lifestyles have been deformed by the cultural aggression of transnational interests and commerce. Our women mostly, but in recent times also our men and even our boys and girls, have become primary and attractive components in the packages we have offered to foreign trade. And as our

concerned teachers have constantly pointed out to us, even our educational institutions have began to be molded by the requirements of the few, and by the demands of transnational manpower needs and pressure. The vibrancy and excitement of our educational and intellectual pursuits, the freedom of our experiments with truth, have become controlled and domesticated in the name of political stability and national security, and have been made dull by their transformation into mere training for what our government refers to as "manpower needs for development."

The situation in which we live, in short, is a situation of great impoverishment, and as all situations of great impoverishment bring about, also a situation of grave crisis. Our pocketbooks testify to the impoverishment of our economic life; the repressions of our liberties give painful expression to the bankruptcy and decadence of our political institutions; the wanton disregard of those things that we have considered sacred in our culture bears testimony to the commercialization that has invaded our lives; the selective killings and disappearances of people, known and unknown, are stark expressions of that violence which has come to characterize our social existence. All of these in turn have impoverished the values and priorities of so many of us. We begin to act and relate towards each other in terms almost exclusively of commercial interests. The corruption and commercialization of so much of the transactions of our collective life have come close to convince many of us, if they have not done so already in so many instances, that everything and everyone has a price, and our sense of responsibility to each other and to our future becomes dulled. We have come close to losing our grip on that humanity without which social and political existence becomes devoid of meaning and content.

From Protest to Political Organization

"This nation," wrote Horacio de la Costa, a Filipino historian, not too long ago, "may be conquered, trampled upon, enslaved, but it can not perish. Like the sun that dies every evening, it will rise again from the dead." If there was one thing that Ninoy had done through his death, it has been to rouse up the spirit of resistance and protest that for a while seemed to have remained dormant. One began to think that too many people were accepting too easily all the foolishness that was going on and beginning to accept as normal the aberrations of Martial Rule and its ostentatious pretensions. Expensive film festivals were held, and few lifted anything to oppose or say anything against them. Even Jaime Cardinal Sin — who is not the most consistent critic of the regime — expressed surprise that his seemed to be a lonely voice when he wrote vehemently against the holding of the Manila International Film Festival, a pet-project of Imelda Romualdez-Marcos. Expensive weddings of the children of high government officials went on, and not very many expressed disgust, despite the fact that at the time one such wedding took place, the clouds of economic depression were already over us. A few uttered a whimper, most others joked about it. Then the "tarmac incident" happened. Then also the outbursts began to happen.

"Hanggang kailan kaya ito" (How long will these last?) and "Pesaan kaya ito" (Where will this lead?) were questions that began to be asked as the protests and demonstrations pulsated. To the government, of course, all of these were only cathartic, and sooner or later, they will not last and fade away, if only the government could stonewall them.

They did not fade too easily however, and even in the form which they initially took, they brought about some significant results. The first Fact Finding Board that was appointed by the President to investigate the

Aquino assassination, which was headed by the Chief Justice, Enrique Fernando, has had to be disbanded, and a new one, headed by Corazon Agrava, has been installed, and while this new board may still be moving a bit too slowly and too cautiously, it seems to be moving in ways that the first board may not have moved at all. The scheduled visit of President Ronald Reagan to the Philippines late in 1983 has had to be postponed indefinitely, and the promised visit at the time that Reagan visits China — which has already taken place — has not materialized. The opposition press bloomed, and a boycott of the "controlled media" brought about significant results.

Protests and demonstrations are important manifestations of the people's will, and as they are, and in the varied forms in which they occur, are significant in the life of any society. Being mainly spontaneous however means that their political impact are only limited. Thus, protest after protest raised the issue of the resignation of Marcos and of his government, but nothing of that sort happened. One might in fact say that nothing of that sort could happen as a result. Many left their political posts in disgust, but Marcos remained. Where then have all the 'yellow rain" gone, and where have all the rallies ended? Is Marcos right that these were only cathartic, or as he put it in one of his speeches, that these were only the fanciful frivolity of "the rich" while those "who are poor" like him (sic.) continue to rally behind his regime?

I do not think so. What in fact has developed is the logical transformation of "spontaneous protest" to political organization, and with that political organization the engaging of those active and planned efforts targetted at bringing about specific results of negation and "opposition" in increasingly wider and wider areas of national political life. Thus, the cry now is no longer "Marcos resign," as if he will as a result of the goodness

of his heart step down from the pinnacles of power which he has so masterfully built up for himself and his cronies; it is to "dismantle the U.S. Marcos dictatorship." The former is a cry of protest; the latter is the battlecry of political organization. The former presumes a modicum of morality and goodwill on the part of Marcos out of which he may willingly step down for the good of his country and people; the latter presumes that the only way Marcos will disappear from the political scene is by pushing him out, so that active and organized effort, or efforts, on various fronts, must now be undertaken to negate his rule and to refuse to give it any semblance of acceptance and credibility.

For many still, political organization means the organized channelling of spontaneous protest into a "protest vote" in the electoral process in the hope that this would lead to the "election" of more opposition people in various government positions and slowly erode from within the power of the Marcos regime. For others, however, — and these are by no means few — other forms of organized negation must now be resorted to which are far more expressive of more direct people's participation in the political struggle and which in the process lifts the quality of political life and the level of political consciousness way beyond the "give and take" of electoral politics and the formalized but often manipulated rules of electoral decorum.

Consider the boycott movement of the May 14 elections in this light. Whatever else we could say about the boycott movement, we must recognize that it is indeed an act of civil disobedience, an act that is willfully and actively organized to ask people to say "no" to and to disobey a promulgated legal requirement — to ask people in short to express total non-cooperation to this regime even in its so-called legal functions — because it has dawned on so many, after so many protests and so many cries of suffering, that that seems to be the only way now

whereby we reject being caught up and domesticated into the logic of domination and dictatorship which the Marcos regime has woven over us and begin to dismantle the structures that that regime has built up through the years. And as some of the proponents of the boycott movement have hinted, if one act of civil disobedience does not work, others will follow. If and when that happens, what remains in the end, and what will ensue after that?

Consider, also in this light, the various teachers' strike that have occurred. Teachers have for so long been among the most oppressed professionals in our society. Though their role in society is often heaped with high praise and noble purpose, what they receive for their work is a pittance compared to what others receive in the professional pay-scale. In recent times, they have become the focal point of the crisis of political responsibility by the fact that they are supposedly the appointed guardians of the polls. Their oppression however has been accompanied by their obvious timidity. They have expressed some complaints, but more often than not, these have been too easily assuaged by the skillful appeal to their sacred duty and by promises of better treatment to come.

Within a very short period of time, moral appeal and persuasion has shifted to political organization, and participation in various protest movements has become transformed into organized strikes. The strike capability of the teachers has reached such proportions that Jaime C. Laya, the New Minister of Education who was formerly Governor of Central Bank, must now be thinking that working in the Central Bank and dealing with the IMF is a picnic when compared with dealing with the striking teachers. Georges Sorel, in his Reflections on Violence, looks at the strike as one of the most potent expressions of social solidarity, so that even when it is targetted at disabling a particular sector of

society in order to seek redress of grievances it has an igniting effect in activating and carrying forward possible wider areas of the social struggle. If within a very short period of time teachers have been able to gain not only the consciousness but also the organized strength to mount what is close to a national strike, how long before the same is attained in the other sectors of the work force? And if all that the government and the educational industry can do in response to that is some more appeal to that "oozy" sense of moral duty and obligation that have been said so many times before, what happens after it? I asked a labor leader from another industry not too long ago how long before organized labor can reach the capability of organizing a general strike, and the answer I got was that it is not too far away. What will happen when a general strike becomes a reality, and given the seriousness of our national situation, can we say that that possibility is really too far-fetched to happen? I ask this question really in order to ask another, perhaps more crucial, question.

Are We in the Brink of a Revolutionary Situation?

Lest I may be misunderstood, let me say at the very outset that when I raise this question it is not because I desire it or that I would want to propose it. I am simply reading our situation, and am beginning to see as an incontrovertible ingredient in that situation the concrete possibility of a revolutionary situation and of the revolutionary option nudging itself into the horizon of our political landscape. I raise the question, in other words, because it begins to be an increasingly obvious part of the logic of the development of our political life. Whether one looks at the revolutionary option as an inevitable component of political life, or as the ultima ratio, the last resort, that one considers because options

have narrowed down and political forces have so popularized so that such an option poses itself as a concrete and real possibility, the fact seems to me to be more and more a part of our national situation that the conditions that bring such an option about have rapidly ripened in recent times. The increasingly critical condition of our economy and the "no exit" character of our political life; the continuing cosmetic response of the established powers to the deep demands of economic, social and political reform; the increasing transformation of spontaneous protest into organized political action; the increasing strike capability of various sectors of the work force and the broad response of people to suggestions of civil disobedience; and the stonewalling tactics of the present regime and its almost total dependency on the military and on American support to maintain itself in power — al) of these constitute the common conditions out of which a revolutionary situation escalates and a revolutionary option is taken. When one adds to this the fact that the Philippines is one place in Asia today where an organized revolutionary movement exists that has a military arm, the strength of which is coming closer and closer to being able to mount a real threat to the military power of the regime, and whose influence has grown considerably in past years, especially in the countryside, then the question of a revolutionary situation becomes far less an abstract possibility and far more a concrete eventuality.

Much in this sense is at stake in the forthcoming May electoral exercise. To those who have opted for a boycott, it is already clear that participation in political exercises that are under the auspices of the Marcos dictatorship plays directly into a process whereby that dictatorship is prolonged and enabled to manipulate its own succession. A boycott, in other words, is a militant though still peaceful effort in trying to prevent that prolongation and in forcing the initial steps at dismantling the present

regime and not allowing it to bide "legitimate" time and regain momentum for cosmetic reforms. And yet even those who have opted for participation have done so with gloomy perceptions of where we are. We should participate, intones Salvador Laurel, Jr., the leader of one of the main .Opposition parties, because "this is one last chance for democracy," or as Cory Aquino, the widow of Ninoy, has said recently, because such is a sacrifice we have to make in order to avert the possibility of armed conflict. Not only the conduct and the results of the elections, but also its consequences and aftermath become crucial in this context in testing the efficacy of this one remaining "peaceful" means of bringing about change. What if after all is said and done nothing drastic happens after May 14, and the prevailing political apparatus remains intact and unchanged in its power and control? And so what if after May 14 more opposition candidates become elected to the Batasang Pambansa? Will they really be able to initiate the real changes in the direction of national life and arrest the deterioration of the national situation, or will it be more of the same except that this time a different cast of characters will be involved? It remains to be seen, in other words, whether the electoral process in our context can deal with real issues and root causes or can only become a " lulling" exercise that diverts attention instead to other things. What will happen if instead of bringing about real changes, elections become instead an "opiate of the people?" Will those who gave democracy this one last chance give it another, or will they then join those who have opted for a boycott and explore other alternatives to change?

A Voice from the Hills

The answer that Father Conrado Balweg — the rebel priest who has joined the New People's Army, who now

leads one of this army's strike forces in the mountains of Northern Luzon, and for whose head the government has placed a P200,000 price — gives to such questions is clear and unequivocal (see his interview with Veritas, April 29-May 5, 1984). Revolution is not "eventuality" or "possibility" but "reality." It is in fact the primary reality of Philippine life from which all that is now going, on in the country must be seen and to which they are leading. All other options save the revolutionary option have now run their course and are inadequate and innocuous in lifting the heavy burden of oppression that has been heavily heaped upon the Filipino people. The fact that, as Balweg claims, U.S. helicopters carry out search-and-destroy missions in some areas of the country makes that burden even heavier and the cost of removing it equally heavier and more difficult.

The revolutionary option in short is a reality that everyone must now face, and it is for him as a Christian — and still a priest of the Church — not so much a "winter discontent" as it is the "springtime of hope" and therefore the supreme expression of the full sacrifice and total commitment to one's people that God demands of his servants.