For the love of my mother country

A friend looked at me and said “I know who you’re rooting for.”

 

“Who?” I asked, wondering how one can predict one’s choice just by appearance alone.

 

“Roxas.”

 

Now that was weird. I didn’t know that I had taken on some hepatitis shade these past few weeks. He was right, though, but if he had asked me that question in the early 80’s when Marcos was basking in power, he wouldn’t have guessed a thing.

 

I was a colegiala then under the Benedictine nuns. After Ninoy died on August 21, 1983, I spent my college life juggling studies, editorial responsibilities in the college newspaper — and student activism.

 

I guess for most of us who spent our youth during the Marcos years, it was more of a calling to join any of the student groups that were actively voicing out the people’s sentiments against a dictatorship that curtailed rights, killed and tortured many, pillaged the treasury, and abused its power so much to the extent that it wanted to remain there for the longest time.

 

While many of you among my friends right now were not born yet at that time, or were still either in grade school or high school, I was doing the rounds of meetings with a group that supported the plight of political detainees. There was a time when I had to visit Nene Pimentel when he was incarcerated in Cebu, and was mistaken for a military informer by people belonging to the extreme left.

 

Every now and then, I and other student journalists would witness the rallies at Ateneo, UP, or the Liwasang Bonifacio – always careful to disperse at the first sign of military personnel for fear of being hosed down by water cannons, or picked up and never found again. Sometimes, the rallies would be just across the block infront of La Salle.

 

The student groups were a mixture of “soc-dems” and the harder core “nat-dems” who had ties with the NPA. Our group was fighting Marcos, but we were also fighting against the communists. It was exciting and terrifying at the same time. Idealism always burns brightly in the energy of the youth.

 

It’s almost 33 years since Ninoy died. It has been 30 years since the People Power Revolution at EDSA. We now find ourselves in a period of unbridled democracy – so much that the Marcoses who got kicked out of Malacanang in 1986 are back in the country, holding positions of power and hidden wealth again, with one of them inching his way closer to the second highest post of the land.

 

As if in a wrestling tag team match, he’s now joined by the foul-mouthed, Viagra-popping mayor who idolizes the older Marcos and who is just a few days closer to being elected to the highest post–threatening to shut down Congress and establish a dictatorship to those who oppose him.  

 

Three decades have a strange way of fading out memories from old people’s minds, and the younger ones do not have a clue what’s going on because the history books have never been rewritten to show the real story during the Marcos era.

 

This democracy has allowed us to open businesses to more investors and entrepreneurs instead of concentrating them within monopolies.

 

This democracy has given us the freedom to speak and write and do what we want – even to the point of lambasting each other and we’re still not silenced by the nozzle of a gun.

 

This democracy has provided us with more infrastructure and technology than we have ever seen in the past three decades – but it’s always never enough.

 

It’s never enough because progress is slow. People are distracted by the small comforts of Starbucks in every corner, and kilometers-long malls where the masses go more for the airconditioning and fast food joints than for anything else.

 

While we’re grateful that we have light rail systems crisscrossing the cities, we’re not grateful when there are more people than cabins, and more breakdowns and accidents than operating times.

 

While some of us can’t get our paychecks around all the restaurants and theaters to go to, the majority still can’t afford to have a single meal on the table.

 

While the rest of us are barely surviving the high cost of medical treatment and hospitalization, the rest are dying or have died because they could not afford it, and no one even noticed.

 

While the BPO, real estate and tourism sectors have made the employees the new bourgeoisie, there’s that large slice of the populace that remains unemployed or underemployed in and outside of the major cities, while our best brains migrate to higher-paying jobs abroad.

 

We’ve come a long way since 1983, or 1986, and I will always be eternally grateful to God for giving me a second chance at life and letting me come this far.

 

The millions of Filipinos who stood their ground at EDSA before are the modern-day heroes of our democracy today. We all fought against a tyrannical rule because we believed in the vision of a free society.

 

Whatever faults each new government has are things that we need to learn from so we can know what to improve.  

Three decades ago, I was part of that group associated with PDP-Laban. It seemed logical then because we were fighting against a dictator. Ideologies do not change, but people do.

 

Today, I have grown a lot older, and I believe, wiser. It behooves me to look at where we were before, what we went through, and where we are now not with the impulsiveness and idealism of youth, but with the logic, reason and maturity that come with advanced years.

 

Even if we differ in our choices for the coming elections, know that I respect your decision, and I hope you will respect mine.

 

We have gone through so much in fighting for our rights and freedom that we lost before. I am so glad that just by exercising our right to vote on May 9, we will get to appreciate the beauty of democracy enough not to let anyone or anything take it away from us – ever again.

 

If there is a chance that history will repeat itself, I know that people will come out again to seek the light. I did before for the love of our mother country. I hope you will too. – Rappler.com

Anne Sarte is a financial services and communications professional. She was a student activist in her college days.