FOR some time now, when Nov. 30 comes around I never fail to wonder what would have become of us politically, economically, and culturally if Emilio Aguinaldo and his patrician cohorts did not dissolve plebeian patriot Andres Bonifacio’s Katipunan (by assassinating him?) and take over the people’s revolution against Spain and the U.S.
It’s because I am acutely aware of what resulted (poverty and powerlessness of the Filipino masses) from the unfair, unjust, exclusive, and inequitable way past ilustrados and today’s oligarchs have run the country to this day.
Obviously, my wonder will have an answer when this country is no longer run by oligarchs. This can happen only if the working class formed their own party that would vie for positions of power in government, for the simple reason that no individual poor worker or farmer can win an election in this country. In other words, we will not know the answer until we have a government that is run by genuine political parties.
Political parties, however, even of the working class, can only be as authentic as their members. They must be founded and led by people who possess a genuine love of country and a lofty set of values chief among which are integrity and honesty.
Spanish colonizers have completely succeeded in growing in Philippine society an elitist culture that divides it starkly into the wealthy and educated elite rulers and the uneducated and poor subjects they lord over. As history would bear out, our elite rulers so far have never exerted more than half-hearted efforts to change a social structure that has exclusively benefitted them. Unsurprisingly, whereas we used to be colonized by foreigners, now we are colonized by domestic leaders.
Accordingly, the most basic need of Philippine society is the cultural reform of all its members. Our educational system needs to produce critical, creative innovators who would continually devise ways of doing things better. First world countries reached heights of development through the innovations of their critical and creative people.
More importantly our religious system (mainly Catholicism) needs to model justice and charity and not acts of piety and paid religious ritual that are often hypocritical. Note that our plundering and murdering leaders regularly attend Sunday Mass and contribute to Church projects.
In the end, therefore, no individual patriot-hero can help us get out of the stifling prison of a colonial culture. Oligarchs will quickly get rid of him/her like they did Bonifacio. We, all of us, need to become critical, innovative, and highly moral citizens, a challenge that only massive and radical reforms in our educational and religious systems can meet.