Is this a mere critical collaboration in aid of election? Or they are only being practical and already had a change of heart? Whatever, I have my translation of the English word “collaboration”. It is “gamitan” – as in, I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I could forgive seeing former activists “socdem”, “popdem” “natdem” or whatever "dem" endorsing other presidential candidates but certainly not Marcos Jr. This collaboration, with no intention of putting the monkeys in a bad light, spells the so-called “monkey business”. It’s an insult to my fallen comrades - those tortured, summarily executed, raped, looted, and manhandled - and the masses and all the innocents who had been victims of his father's authoritarian rule and all the abuses that we have witnessed on those dark, brutal, and cruel days that happened right at our own noses. I wept with the aging parents of Abet Enriquez, a human rights worker who was abducted by the military in August of 1985 in Lucena City. They died without seeing Abet again. My heart also bled knowing the story of Puri Pedro, a social worker and church worker who in 1977 is suspected to have been tortured by Marcos's intelligence agents inside her hospital room in Bataan strangled by a piece of wire, and in her hands was a medal of the Virgin Mary. Including the story of medical intern Leo Alto who was brutally murdered by a unit of the Philippine Constabulary on August 1, 1975. Leo is the eldest brother of Ma'am Minda, MPDC of Municipality of Sablayan.
Abet, Puri, and Leo are just 3 of the 11,103 victims of the regime from 1972 to 1986 which the presidentiable Marcos Jr was part of and benefitted from.
Such collaboration is an outright disrespect of those martyrs whose names and stories are inscribed in history and the book “Ang Mamatay nang Dahil sa 'Yo: Heroes and Martyrs of the Filipino People in the Struggle Against Dictatorship 1972-1986” and more. The present historical distortion being spewed in political campaigns demeans their memory. Forget and move on but do not condone. My 25 years in my diocese's social action apostolate as a lay worker taught me that.
Do the former anti-Martial Law activists-politician seriously support the dictator’s son or they are just using him to wangle funds and other logistics from him or the entire Marcos-Duterte political machinery? It is my humble opinion that still, win or lose, a politician should stick to his or her values and principles and every problem will be solved once and for all.
I firmly believe that politicians from the society’s outskirt can win independently without any support from national politicians with autocratic tendencies and backgrounds. Isn’t it the great helmsman once said that “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of history”? Well, I may not be in a position to say this because I am not a politician. You have all the right to judge me that way.
But, his father's son, Marcos Jr has never accepted the crimes that happened during the dark days of Martial Law and has never apologized for it, sought pardon, nor provided amends to countless innocent victims, the poor and the oppressed, and their loved ones whose lives had been devastated or ruined. We, human rights activists back in the day worked for and struggled with the victims and their relatives almost 18 hours a day.
“Gamitan” could also be called “Quid pro quo”, a Latin term for "something for something". It describes a situation when two parties engage in a mutual agreement to exchange anything reciprocally. “Gamitan” too has sexual undertones. (Understandably so since politics is a relationship, it also has sexual allusions.)
Their candidacy is cultivating more than mere historical amnesia, as to how Joseph Scalice puts it, but a national lobotomy. These former activists now believe that the "Golden Era" of the Philippines was during the Martial Law days. The greatest lies of Marcos Jr.
To my mind, “tactical collaboration” and/or “strategic collaboration” are collaborations still. Call me whatever you wish but it's one of many things I do not understand in party politics up to now that I am already old. But how could one respect one's political opinion if s/he could not respect historical facts?
Collaboration with this “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” actuality is plain and simple opportunism which is the art or practice of taking advantage of opportunities or circumstances, or of seeking immediate advantage with little regard for ultimate consequences and moral and ethical grounds. With this, opportunism for me in whatever form is not acceptable. Opportunism is not and will never be a positive and desirable value. Besides, according to Lucius Annaeus Seneca and Stephen Crane: “Every sin is the result of a collaboration."
My bias against this issue of “tactical collaboration” and “strategic collaboration” centers on this line of thought I’ve learned from one of the Church’s Social Teachings: “The value of any political goal stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes. It can be manipulated for reasons of power. Democratic practices without values easily turn into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism, regardless of ideological principles and leanings that its sponsors believe in.” (John Paul II in section 70 of his Encyclical Letter “Evangelium Vitae”) If it is true with political goals, it is also true about an individual politician.
Pardon me for seeing this issue on “old and narrow” lenses of human rights principles and my church’s social doctrines, the monocles in every socio-political opinion that I blog.
I am an old-school purist.
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(Photo: Jennifer Laude Facebook)
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