Sunday, March 02, 2008 Sun.Star Essay: Change, changes By Erma M. Cuizon
THE US election is on the verge of change, but within the laws of the land. Not Barack nor Hillary will walk up to the White House and pull out Bush at the point of a gun. But change they promise in the Democratic party flag---a president-elect above the issue of race or gender in the American scene.
Change is a big word. It comes with a bang or, really, quietly it tiptoes into our consciousness. We need to be aware whether it’s here and where it’s leading us.
Change is the politician’s offering, although the changes promised could be intractable, composed only in poetics, as Hillary says about Barack’s offer of change.
Here at home, the Cory group wants change and will turn the streets in Makati into a boxing ring where to shout and to fight so that Gloria resigns. The gentlemen from both the opposition and the administration are the referees, watching a couple of women in a brawl, even while the “people’s” witnesses on the side cry on cue and Estrada crows.
The opposition wants change and is willing to rain on the administration’s parade in rallies and rallies and TV posts which make fun of PGMA and some secretaries. In turn in a “unity walk”, the administration dares, “Let’s go through the legal process.” Both parties talk of time for change, the administration saying it has done some advantageous changes in fiscal and monetary policies; the opposition saying “Pwe!”
Making something work is change, lest you forget. It’s one of those changes we don’t recognize easily, we think we have to change the whole works to bring in change like thunder. But fixing a part of it changes it, this we can’t realize soon enough. It doesn’t take a blast to have change in our system or in our life. It doesn’t take People Power 10 to change.
The politics promising change is what politicians talk about during election and some do get elected, as author John Fantry puts it, “on the coattails of the (perceived) need for change.”
Some years back, we drove Marcos out of Malacañang in a show of people power. But change did not come with it. In the years after Cory, changes must have occurred but they were not recognized. Our idea of urging change not later but now! is noise barrage; it must make a sound or there’s no change.
Then it was Estrada who had to bolt out of the presidential palace and was found guilty of plunder. What change did we get out of it? Perhaps Gloria is keeping up with the projects she promised in the provinces and cities, as the governors and mayors attest to in TV appearances which sound like proselytism.
But you could also say People Power is change, all right. But if it succeeds at this point in time, it would be wrong change, the administration says, sending a message to the world about a wobbly government system in this country. Some businesses could roast in the middle of “that People Power thing” in Makati.
We both want and are afraid of change.
One big change in American politics that’s palpable now---one that you can estimate in data---is the increase of voters this year who bothered to vote and will vote, but especially the now surprisingly active unmarried women voters.
In 2004, 20 million unmarried American women voters didn’t go to the polls. The new awareness of that particular sector is seen as important in the next election years, a newly active electorate who could also urge change in governance and projects---unmarried women who are either single or divorced, separated or widowed, with children, with elderly parents to care for.
The unmarried women are voting with strength, which is a “surprising” change in the US political landscape, they’re all talking about it! Change takes time or moves quietly, a measure different from the last time it was worked on. And it doesn’t need yellow ribbons to work.
