Oppressing the dreamers

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
3/8/2006



“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today…” the Black American civil rights leader Martin Luther King delivered in his historic 1963 speech at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial that became the high point of the American civil rights movement which expressed and won its struggle through protest marches in the streets of America. King and his movement suffered the truncheons and tear gas of police too but eventual won the freedom for its people.

Lest Filipinos today miss the full meaning of the protest movement in the streets of Metro-Manila, we cite Martin Luther King’s epic struggle to situate the growing struggle of Filipinos to realize the dream of a better Philippines where the content of character of its citizens and the merit of their work shall be the basis for judgment and recompense, where honor and courage are given just credit, where people’s welfare is held supreme and not profits of commerce, where criminals blue or white in their collars are reproved and not rewarded as it is today.

Last week I heard three stories depicting the horrendous social crisis Philippines is facing today. Randall Antolin, a college student at the UST was shot through his heart and died in the prime of his life all apparently resisting the robbery of his cell phone, leaving a distraught mother and father who are one of the most upright and hardworking couple I have ever known. The second story is about Agnes, the secretary of my wife’s acupuncturist; her ears lobes were almost torn off by a snatcher; and the third story is about an Oasis of Love member who was also shot dead by a robber.

The stories of woe is not just about crime, its about very ordinary things like an electricity bill that many also consider to be a criminal situation already. Like this text from a friend. “…am still grieving my mother’s passing away… and the 85% increase in my electricity bill. F…k the …. I’ll do what I can to convince the revolutionary council NOT to spare these oligarchs!#@!” From the ending of the text you might have surmised that this friend is a rebel of some type, and I can assure you he’s not communist but of the military reformist type. We have more stories about water and grocery bills, taxes.

An anti-communist scare, the old McCarthyist style, is being launched by the Arroyo regime and the AFP military agit-prop machine. I can confirm the latter by what I have heard over the AFP radio, dzVV, which was full of vitriol this morning not only against communists but also against “trapos” (traditional politicians) – I see this as a sign that a rightwing military effort is on the way against civilian authority. But the anti-communist scare does not stand up to examination when one checks out the prime communist country in Asia and how it is treating its citizens.

Checking out prices of the two most important public commodity in China, power and water, my international business friend Mr. Ty just returning from Shanghai said: he pays P 3.74/kwh for power and P 1.64/cu. m. for water in his China operations. Isn’t that a dream for Filipinos, it it could be envisioned? China’s power cost would further go down once its mega Three Gorges Dam hydropelectric project is fully operational. The Chinese people can indeed dream on. China is building its dream of a modern economically progressive society, and they got there with great struggle and sacrifice.

Here in the Philippines we are in danger of forgetting how to dream for our nation and out people, with 60% of the population scrambling to leave the country (I heard that Jim Paredes has called it quits and is leaving for Australia, despite his upper class life and status here). Yet, hope springs again as the events of last week show us that the Filipino dream lives on. That’s when Gen. Danilo Lim, Gen. Marcelina Franco and Col. Ariel Querubin, all commanding officers of elite Philippine military and police forces took steps the past weeks to address a gnawing unease in the hearts of the people and their fellow soldiers about the present government.

Like Martin Luther King the elite officers tried to express that hope and dream by a public demonstration, at the Edsa Shrine with other protestors who’ve pounded the streets for years to pave a road towards that dream. These officers did what they did in the hope that a change could begin in an otherwise desperate Philippine situation. There was no “swift move accompanied by the use of violence”, there was no coup. There was a hope that every would listen to reason that change is imperative now. But it seems to be a crime to dream and to protest inequities as Lim, Franco, Querubin and the nation have done and are being penalized for today.

Does the nation have to go the way of Mao Tse-tung for that dream? That would be a monumental tragedy. Can it be avoided if Gloria persists in suppressing and oppressing the dreamers?

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