RAYMUND FERNANDEZ
The contemporary revolutionist is only fighting against greed. As it has always been in the Philippines, greed has a way of becoming unbridled and uncontrollable by its own actions.
Greed has a way of eating into itself.
We saw it happen with Marcos.
We are seeing it happening again. Marcos had, at least, an ideology.
The present one only has the war on drugs.
It is already making the same mistakes Marcos did.
On its own volition, it has created enough symbols and heroes to facilitate its doom.
We might as well just keep talking to each other, meet whenever we can, watch carefully, learn, and hope that the next real change coming within our reach will be more meaningful than the last one.
The next revolution ought to be more committed to the cause of ending poverty and ignorance in our country. We had fought many revolutions already but they have only changed power from one part of the elite to another.
As is, perhaps so far, inevitable. Always, they flaunt the cause of “saving the poor and the country from this or that real or, in this case, imagined problem.
Always, this never rose beyond being an empty slogan. And yet, the cause of easing if not eradicating poverty is the single most important cause for real change.
Poverty is the root cause of all our problems. Elections do not work well here. They do not work because the poor sell their votes.
They sell their votes because they are ignorant. They are ignorant because they are poor.
Poverty is always a vicious cycle. It is a vicious cycle both at the very personal and collective level. Whichever power-elite had been in power here marked itself by stealing as much as they could while they were in power.
This is, with the exception perhaps of the Aquinos who had no long term plans of staying and holding on to power: Something taken to be “stupidity” by some people here who either get it or don’t get it at all.
But for the most part, political power grows here out of some secret bank account stashed away, most likely, in some foreign land. We had seen it happen before. It is, most likely, happening now.
Money, secret money, is the glue that holds people in power together. But it is never a very strong glue. Or at least, it can never be as strong as the greed which eventually tears them apart. Marcos was to a major part destroyed by the very same people who were closest to him. Money and power work that way.
Meanwhile, the true revolutionists should always have the broader and more far-reaching view. More and more of us are learning from history. And I am convinced even the younger ones are watching all these and learning.
I have a firm basis for this conviction.
Those in power now feel so entrenched in and drunk with their power they do not even bother to hide anything.
They commit abuses of power that in the old days would have been unthinkable. And they are doing it at a time when nothing can really be hidden away. In due time, more and more of us will awake.