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By Nicon F. Fameronag
Less than a month after Senator Antonio F. Trillanes IV and Brig.
Gen. Danilo Lim walked out of a court hearing at the Makati city
hall and trudged off to the Manila Peninsula Hotel to demand, in
full view of the media, that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo resign from the
presidency, only to be arrested later in the day as common
criminals, many Filipinos have become familiar with how such
incident happened, but could not still get a sane sense of why it
happened.
Well, an excess of epithets, tons of it, had
been thrown during the last four weeks, against Trillanes, wrapped
in gilded gift boxes by GMA partisans, traditional politicians, and
kibitzers and delivered through the mainstream media, but these were
expected. In carrying forward his revolution to oust Arroyo to be
able to effect genuine systemic change in the country, Trillanes
recognizes the important and legitimate role of the media in society
but had never engaged—will not engage—in traditional means to
ingratiate himself or his cause to the “fourth estate.” In
Trillanes, WYSIWYG.
Thus, nary a whimper or whine has been heard
from the Trillanes camp, even if it knew that the painful truth has
been buried deep under an avalanche of lies. Thus, when the barrage
of criticism, most bordering on calumny, started streaming in
immediately after the Peninsula incident, Trillanes could only
chuckle, his faint smile hinting that he was satisfied that one of
the many steps toward change has been accomplished. “We were
defeated in this one, but we have not failed,” he told me.
“Deretso lang tayo. Let us do our duty,” he added.
Such is Trillanes’s conviction, his undiluted
courage, that one was wont to entertain the hope that had he had a
plan to forcibly takeover the government on November 29, as the
Arroyo administration now wants the public to believe, that plan
would succeed. Then victory would have sired a thousand fathers,
with the onrush of arm-chair revolutionists and “I-told-you-so”
siguristas planting stakes to own part of the revolution they
themselves should have initiated, but did not because of their
cowardice.
As a young change advocate, Trillanes knew that
charlatans inhabit the country’s political spectrum. They are all
over, occupying positions of power and possessing filthy wealth that
could be used against him and his horde of believers. He knew that
paid hacks in the media could continue to paint him in a bad light,
ridicule him even. But has these facts deterred him from pursuing
his cause? The Peninsula incident showed that not even handcuffs,
police boots grinding on his hands because of hate, and the prospect
of long incarceration, can douse the burning fire of his desire to
reform Philippine society.
The debate on the Trillanes “caper” had
focused on his alleged method. “I agree with what he wanted to
accomplish but am against his means to achieve it,” was the
familiar chorus heard. This debate can go on and on, yet it will not
settle matters. For Trillanes’s method is to act, not to fence-sit
and be co-opted, as most who criticized him do—and did on that
fateful day.
I even now suspect that most of the calumny
heaped upon Trillanes was a result of the nagging feeling of guilt
that the critics felt for themselves: that unlike Trillanes, they
don’t have the capacity to stand-up against Gloria, like what
police Gen. Geary Barias did, who employed the sociological method
of transference by venting his barbaric anger to Trillanes’s wrist
and by hauling him off to the bus in his trousers. In short, it’s
the feeling of supreme inadequacy—OK, the lack of balls—that
ignited the extreme criticisms.
The hoped-for focus of the national discussion
on why Trillanes did what he did should be on the action, for at the
end of the day, it will boil down to the oft-repeated admonition of
President John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what the country can do for
you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
Trillanes is a fool, said Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile,
but who believes a public official who faked his own ambush to
entrench a dictator? In saying he himself contemplated killing
himself had he failed in the EDSA Revolution, Enrile knew that this
was a comfortable option than the AFP’s dark and cold torture
chambers where Marcos critics were conveniently herded and isolated.
But of all the silly comments thrown in after
the November 29 incident, the one that provoked incredulity was the
statement of a Malacanang factotum that Trillanes was the cause of
rising LPG prices. Hep-hep, hooray! Macapagal Arroyo, who claims to
be an economist, should have squirmed at this comment, bud did she?
She must even have delighted in such inanity.
Then, there was the criticism of a non-entity
that became fleetingly one after the November 29 incident, obviously
upon the prodding of Malacañang. The non-existent group said
Trillanes was un-Filipino.
Arroyo’s hirelings have used this line before,
in the election of 2004 (remember “Hello, Garci?”) against the
late Fernando Poe Jr. They even filed a disqualification case
against FPJ, alleging he was not a Filipino. Well, the court said he
was a Philippine citizen, but he was dead. Trillanes, like FPJ, is a
Filipino and he is alive, thanks to the tender mercies of his guards
who refused to follow the alleged order of Gen. Esperon to waste him
during the Peninsula incident.
The African writer, Chinhua Achebe, was it who
said that a tiger need not proclaim his tigritude. Trillanes need
not proclaim his “Filipinoness” to be considered a Filipino. He
won by 11 million votes during the May 14, 2007, elections despite
of the efforts of this administration to repeat “Hello, Garci?”
But why did Trillanes attempt a failed
revolution? Because it was there, in the first place, to be waged,
like a mountain waiting to be climbed.
The objective conditions to dislodge a corrupt
despot are ripe. It’s not only the surveys which say so. Even the
traditional politicians from both sides of the fence and who will be
the first to become unhappy ones once genuine systemic change takes
effect, say so. Even the soldiers, who are gagged by Esperon, say
so. The teachers, the OFWs, the farmers and fishermen say so. The
Church … well, forget the Church in the meantime. My daughter,
Lara, says so. Only the paid hacks and the bribe-able politicians,
the local government officials, the crony-authors of ZTE and
Transco, and cyber-ed ad nauseam, say GMA must be president for
life.
In short, ramdam na ramdam na na kailangang
patalsikin sa puwesto si GMA dahil puro kasiphayuan ang dala sa
sambayanang Pilipino.
And how should this be accomplished? Armed
insurrection? People Power? Election? Cha-cha? Impeachment? Refer
back to the statement of Gen. Lim at the Peninsula on November 29.
The revolution that we ought to wage is a
work-in-progress. It is not correct to say that our national cancer
is curable only by an election in 2010, although that is a
prescription that, as 2008 enters, is becoming a remote possibility,
given Gloria’s gluttony for political power. Paging Mar Roxas,
Manny Villar, Loren Legarda, Richard Gordon, Noli de Castro, and
Panfilo Lacson. Tell us if there will be a 2010.
Trillanes did what he did because a revolution
never waits for timing. A revolutionist who waits for favorable
winds before he sails faces the unintended consequence of getting
suffocated by the short bursts of wind that come between a real
storm and a perfect calm.
A writer, said Nadine Gordimer, writes because
he or she doesn’t want to be suffocated by the demons inhabiting
his or her soul. A revolutionist wages a revolution because he
doesn’t want to get waylaid by stifling concerns and worries of
who’s on his side and what do they bring upfront. He only keeps
worrying if his revolution is on the side of the people. Once he is
sure of it, he tries to know and to understand that whatever the
outcome of his revolution, a correct step is taken.
The Philippine Revolution of 1896 was not a
single act of settling societal contradictions. It was a series of
steps, of bloody wars, of defeats and victories, of retreat and
consolidation that dates back to Mactan.
The revolution Trillanes is waging is only one
of those steps, yet because of the dire predicament the Filipinos
are in, they dare look at it as if it is the final chapter of the
effort to free them from the malice of misgovernance and from the
claws of a corrupt government. We cannot blame them. They have been
waiting for redemption since 2001.
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