OUR current situation has parallelism with early days of martial law. Everything seems to be in a conundrum.
Everything was in suspended animation except for the daily sirens of curfew, illegal searches, raids and arrests, and often capped by the speeches of Marcos Sr. on so-called new society's grandeur.
Today, the Marcos Jr. administration likewise conjures another new society against the backdrop of unabated red-tagging of the left and the elite opposition, the muzzled opposition, and worsening crisis.
Economy is down. Neoliberal economic policies continue to plunder and pillage our resources and communities. Economic hardships engulf most Filipinos but worse for workers and poor farmers living on the edge of survival and violence. While the ruling elites and dynasties enjoy the spoils of oppression and exploitation.
This early, it is clear that the new administration's puppetry and obedience to the US and China will continue, perhaps to a higher level; such will only bring more risks and disasters to our people and nation.
Tremendous socio-cultural problems grip us. Law, authority and power have been weaponized against the poor and social dissent. There is a breakdown of morality and an upsurge in crimes. National goals are blurred. Social values are distorted and perverted. The youth sector is googled and alienated from structural realities. Most citizens live for their individual family survival.
There has been a sudden and unexplained silence among the anti-Marcos-Duterte elite opposition. The outspoken critics seemed voiceless. Everybody seems to go with the flow or conform to the situation. The progressive democratic social movement, the media, the academe, the churches, still manage to speak up, but are also terrorized, red-tagged and marginalized. The lone armed movement in the country continues the resistance but has difficulty mustering sustained and significant urban mass support.
Conundrum seems to engulf everyone.
Many of the supporters of the new administration pin their hope on BBM, their new messiah, but still wallow in poverty leaving some room for potential dissent. Still more want to break free but could not do much for fear of resbak from the status quo, and uncertainty of the situation. Others, for lack of better alternatives, just want to give BBM a chance to prove his worth.
Pitiful situation. The historic anti-colonial, anti tyranny, anti-dictatorship struggles of our ancestors and those ahead of us, which produced dozens of martyrs and heroes, and bonded us as a multi-linguistic people and nation, seemed to have lost and gone.
Let's blame no one. The situation leads us to the fact that the powers of the state apparatus for deception and repression rooted in the strong dominance of the local elites nurtured by colonial powers remain so immense and superior, while our people's culture of dependence and submission remain strong, and recurring in historical confrontations. Indeed, our situation is also a conjuncture of great challenges and confrontations.
We either stand by idly and be in a conundrum, or study the situation from historical perspective and our collective national goals and engage in transformative and liberative actions.
There is no third way. Status quo, or real social change. Muerto o Vida.
But first, we must heal our own wounds, wounds from selfishness, parochialism, confusion and fear, political alienation, and dogmatism - factors that contributed to the weakening of our collective strength and will.
Only then can we redeem our nation as a collective people.
True, we don't need to rush, only fools do that.
We just need to focus, be passionate and resolute, and combine them with a good mix of programmatic and methodical approaches and some spontaneity of actions. In our social advocacy work, it might be of help to elevate our strategy to the framework of expose-oppose, organize-mobilize, and propose-construct. In this way, we are liberative and constructive.