Here is a copy of the essay I submitted as a reflection paper for my subject sociology two years ago. I have a feeling that I will be put to prison as soon as it gains wide readership. But never mind that. After all, the prison is the house of the worlds greatest thought and wisdom. Filipinos are Forgetful By: Bryan M. Santos We Filipinos, according to one of our National Artists for Literature F. Sionil Jose, are forgetful. He justified this assumption by our fondness of statues which for him the chief purpose is to remind us that someone existed or something happened signified by them. True that, however puny his argument may be, we have short memories, nay, we are indeed forgetful. How many of us could still remember the role that Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile had played in the Marcos Dictatorship? Do we still remember that he was one of Marcos’ allies during that time and that he was actually the chief architect of Martial Law? Well, let he himself be the one to remind us. In a book he wrote entitled “Juan Ponce Enrile: A Memoir” and was published just recently, he narrated his very place in the Marcos Regime. In that book he contends that 1) had he not been there, Martial Law would have been worse and 2) he himself was a victim of it because of the dilemma he had to confront. Both of these contentions, I strongly believe, are decisions that for sure had passed through the sieve of reason of his irrefutable intelligibility no matter how relatively justifiable they might be. These same decisions, however, appeared to be the ones that refuted that very same intelligibility. In spite of this, he was able to change his image (from Dictator’s right hand to a liberator). By writing his own version of his past association with Marcos, he somehow rewrote history. And this will not only prove Filipinos’ forgetfulness. Worse, it would expose their very loose malleability when implanted with information no matter how wrong, no matter how contradictory with their own experiences. As Conrado de Quiros once said “To forget is better than to remember misinformation”. Truly, placing Senate President Enrile in one of the tripartite institutions of our government is a clear manifestation that we have short memories, worse, we remembered wrongly. Another proof of our conscious amnesia is the presence of the Marcoses in the government. Something that happened just two decades ago is not easy to forget especially that it forged the history of our nation in the wrong direction. For sure, many of us could still easily call to mind how brute those two decades were under the iron fist of the Marcoses. One can even say that 333 years of Spanish Rule is better than two decades of dictatorship. The latter was experienced, the former was history. But what happened to us? Does the tenure of the Marcoses in public offices imply that we want another martial law? How come we forgot their perilous contribution in our nation’s history? While forgetfulness in this situation is tolerable, permissiveness is not. If it be amnesia, let heaven fall on earth just so we would be awakened. Another situation that depicts our forgetfulness is the winning of actors and actresses in the field of politics. This has been the trend in the last two decades where T.V. personalities would pursue seats in the government taking advantage of their wide popularity. It began with Former President Estrada. And little by little, the virus became contagious resulting to a handful like hem filling the ballot every election. Yes, I just called it a contagious virus. It is a disease so fatal that if it would not be remedied, the integrity and very soul of our nation will be put to peril. I have nothing against them seeking seats in public office. What I am totally against for is their abusive behavior implied by their attitude of taking advantage of the popularity that they have. They abuse the feeble mind of the masses. They are sure they are well-known to them, especially the poor who constitute a large chunk of our population and they would grab that opportunity. To say it in a more but simple fashion, look how Lito Lapid won despite the fact that his competitors were among the greatest and bravest in our country. Was it a fair fight at all? Was not the mind of the people influenced wrongly? That was what exactly happened. The mind of the people, their very soul is swayed. They were abused. Indeed, the intrusion of T.V. Icons in Philippine government is the wooden horse in that very institution. Its integrity and credibility are tarnished. One might say: “But some of them are better than those with doctoral degrees in the government”. I do not disagree. I have always been consistent that leadership ability is far different from intelligibility. But I always desire for both when it comes to our leaders. Who would not want the best in them? But to say that some of those T.V. Icons are better leaders is to posit that not all of them are, worse, most of them are not. We have to remember, or perhaps be reminded because we have forgotten, that public office is a profession. It is both theory and skill-laden. What can we expect from T.V. personalities? Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that they were intelligent. But they must also be experienced. Politics and entertainment industry are two different institutions. In no way that they are similar. How then do I say that we are forgetful in this context? Simple, we elected those T.V. Icons, we gave them a seat in the government, and in the end when they had done nothing for the amelioration of our country we bombard them with biased criticisms. I say biased because in the first place, we were the ones who placed them in that position. They, at first, make us salivate but make us despair later. It has been their routine but we have not learned the lesson of history. We elect them today, and when we found them unworthy in the future, we suddenly forget that they are there because of us. What a disease! It is hard to admit that we are forgetful. But circumstances push us to do so. Look how many crimes are committed by no one-“criminal-less crimes”. Notice how these crimes are committed by same persons over and over again. What happened to our ethical moorings? The Christian doctrines taught us to forgive but not to tolerate. By giving them a seat in the government the second time, it is either that we lost our long-treasured values or we developed a conscience so blind not to see the corruption and so coward not to combat it. We were so brave that we jammed in the streets of EDSA to oust the dictator. But our cowardice seemed to prevail when we even let GMA stay in Malacanang after forging our suffrage so precious, so inalienable. She was also a dictator. She would have been driven out of her office as well. But we are now a different people. Let me go back to the threshold premise and turn it into a question. Are we forgetful? Answer: a resounding yes! This conscious amnesia, as I mentioned earlier, is very critical to our progress as a nation. I say conscious because it is purely pretension. We do not forget really. Instead we force ourselves to forget because it is the more pleasing way out. The only panacea to this would be statues themselves. Let us build statues of the Marcoses, of Enrile, and of T.V. Icons in the government. And in our hearts, let us engrave how we have become so forgetful, so full of pretensions.
Posted on: Sun, 04 May 2014 02:29:25 +0000
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