This story originally appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on November 8, 2005.
For the past months, I’ve kept a lot of issues wrapped in silence. I’m one of those people who may not be marching on the streets but are seething inside.
Right after the “Hello Garci’ tapes surfaced, my initial reaction was anger. And it turned into fury when President Macapagal-Arroyo said: “I’m sorry … but let’s move on.” In my head the question kept ringing: “How can the nation go on with its business when it is weighed down by injustice? She has no mandate, to say the least, and now she’s asking an entire people to accept a lie. She must be out of her mind.”
As I was getting myself ready to join street marches again, I bumped into an old friend in law school whom I’ve always respected for having an analytical mind. He argued that this was not the appropriate time for yet another people power and that GMA still remained our best option.
At the end of our discussion, I must admit I was half-way convinced by his arguments. Ironically, we had our talk at about the same time the opposition seemed unable to organize itself. Doubts began to cloud my mind and eventually developed into confusion. And when I decided that I couldn’t wholly trust the agenda of the opposition, I began to lose hope and took refuge in blissful indifference. I stopped religiously reading newspapers and watching the late-night news on TV. I focused instead on other matters, until I became totally ignorant of what was happening around me.
For a time, I thought I had peace of mind. Until one Saturday night, when unexpectedly I got a wake-up call. I was watching an episode of the TV show “Imbestigador” on Juan Tanga which exposed the pitiable state of education and literacy. It woke me up from my slumber and moved me. These are my countrymen and what have I done for them? The eyes of those young lads seemed to be begging me to do something. I began to chide myself for doing nothing about their lot and even thinking of letting the political opposition do all the fighting. And as if to reinforce the alarm, I came across a quote from Joseph Addison saying: “There is no greater sign of general decay of virtue in a nation than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.”
I began to ask myself: Have we come to this? Are we no longer held together by a moral consensus and a sense of justice? Is our battle for truth really an insurmountable barrier or is it our own weakness of purpose that is proving to be a barrier?
It is deeply disheartening to see that even religious leaders and some bright young men and women are beginning to accept GMA’s “truth” because of the absence of a viable option to her leadership. I’ve always believed that it is better to lose a good fight than to win fighting for a bad cause. No, I refuse to give up the struggle to remove the stain of dishonesty from our national life. I cannot accept GMA’s call to unite and build a strong republic for her. She has no moral ascendancy to sound that call. Her half-hearted apology only hid the important things and revealed the superficial ones. Lest we forget, the truth has no shades of grey.
After the impeachment complaint was murdered by her allies in the House of Representatives and now the policy of suppression of our basic rights through the so-called “calibrated preemptive response” and EO 464, it is clear to me that she does not believe in justice or democracy. Her latest acts are incompatible with her call for national reconciliation. I would rather preserve the division afflicting our nation than support an evil uniformity. It may have taken some time for me to realize that by doing nothing I was signaling my approval for everything she was doing. I am glad to have been awakened from this nightmare of indifference. I cannot stay aside and just sit in quiet desperation.
