an we still talk?  Of course we can, with those who already share our passions and sentiments. But can we still talk in sobriety with people we still have to convince, with those we need to understand, with those on “the other side”?   Actually, we can heal our nation’s wounds by listening to one another’s thoughts and feelings.  In the present atmosphere of hostility, real healing can only come from honest heeding, not from insults, taunts, loud voices, fists blows, flying rocks, truncheons or bullets.

        What happened in the last few days, weeks and months are but chapters of a single stream of a still continuing history, with sets of details that infuriate one side or the other. These details tend to overshadow the very deep wounds inflicted on whatever degree of unity we had already built as a nation. The virus of rabid partisanship has spawned an epidemic, afflicting many people on both sides of the political divide. Those infected show symptoms of being fanatical for all acts and pronouncements of their own camps, and exhibit total hostility to whatever “the other side” says or does. Of course, the degrees would vary from person to person.

        Hopefully, enough people will effectively resist this virus so our nation would not head towards a series of bloody matches and rematches, a series of coups and counter-coups, a series of “EDSAs” and “counter-EDSAs”. We hope there are enough people who will heed both sides of the social, political and cultural conflict, to prevent this nation from marching towards civil war.  With enough resolve, we can really stop this virus from dividing more families and clans, from straining more friendships, and from fully turning a nation against itself.

It has become a trivial question which side really started a melee, or which side won a round, it has become a petty question which side is more abrasive, more indecent, more haughty, more unreasonable, more prone to violence, than the other.  Any clash among groups of Filipinos, especially if there are casualties on whichever side, worsens the present socio-political division among our people.  No victor has any reason to gloat over the other side’s defeat, not just because the victor today may be defeated tomorrow, but really because the nation as whole ultimately loses in the whole affair.  Filipinos are collectively losing not just investor confidence but nationhood itself.

        The supporters of the present administration need to listen to the present protesters, despite the temptation to simply ignore the points of that side and closed-mindedly dismiss them all as untrue and unreasonable.  All who claim to lead the people to their upliftment need to heed the voices, the very heartbeats, of the impoverished.  Instead of dismissing them as ignorant and spreading insulting jokes about them, instead of impatiently and condescendingly trying to “educate” them, the administration’s supporters, especially the “civil society organizations,” have to strain efforts to understand why the impoverished masses feel and act the way they do, including those of them who may have turned violent, even as the sentiments of the masses are largely unventilated in a country where channels of public opinion have been elite-dominated for centuries.  The protesters cannot reasonably be all condemned for the gross and lawless acts of desperate and unprincipled elements in their ranks, at least some of whom were reportedly infiltrators.

        At the same time, the middle-class professionals, businessmen and students cannot be blamed, either, for the oppression that has long been suffered by the poor of this country.  Although, many of these intellectuals have displayed naïve insensitivity to the pains of the masses and ironic ignorance of the centuries-old class grievances, and are aggravating these wounds with insulting jokes, but not all of them have been guilty of this. More and more middle-class or even well-to-do people have gradually realized an inescapable karmic or spiritual bond with their less-fortunate brothers and sisters from whom they had long been alienated by class status and Westernized schooling.

        We all have to review with intellectual honesty our comprehension of the principles of the Rule of Law. We have to be consistent in upholding the Constitution whichever side may seek to invoke its provisions, like presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, or the only lawful bases for declaring the Presidency vacant. The Rule of Law is a crucial unifying tool in every civilized society. We cannot afford to keep the Rule of Law hostage to the rule of the mob, to media magic, to military might, not even to a Court that can be pressured to pragmatically exceed its purely-judicial mandate.  Real adherents of the Rule of Law would uphold this ideal beyond partisan interests. Deliberate selectivity in such adherence would be hypocrisy.

        By this same logic, all real advocates of human rights would protest the soldiers’ mauling of captured protesters at Mendiola last Tuesday, even though some of the latter had really been “barbarian” in behavior. The universality of human rights has to be upheld universally. To uphold the Bill of Rights, the state has the duty to choose very well, and discipline very effectively, the men it assigns to crowd control.  “Passions of the moment” are no excuse to violate detainees’ rights from the very moment of apprehension.

        And  all real crusaders for peace would keep on working for social dialogue of the most earnest kind, where intolerance, condescension, vengeance, hysteria and violence have no place. It appears that the organizations the government has been holding peace talks with have not been representing adequately the voice of the impoverished masses in this country.  The latter have therefore remained a largely-silent lot without real leaders of their own to physically lead them in successful actions for their own real interests, and therefore their sporadic spontaneous actions have really been vulnerable to perceptions of having been manipulated by politicians. A real social dialogue would be a much bigger challenge than just holding peace talks with foreign-based leaders of armed movements.

Last October, at the height of debates around the clamor for President Estrada to resign, SanibLakas Foundation issued a statement asking everyone to take the broader perspective on the controversies. Last January, after the controversial induction of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as President, we issued a follow-up message for all us to reach out to the ordinary Filipino. SanibLakas now seeks to reiterate these urgent calls. At the risk of being crushed by the ire of elements on both sides, we ask as many people as we can convince to stand together like the formidable Bernardo Carpio of historic legend, with hands outstretched to prevent a pair of gigantic boulders from bashing each other.  Our healing and very survival as a nation depend on how staunchly a substantial number of Filipinos would heed these calls. Awatin natin sa pag-aaway-away ang magkakapatid!

We don’t want our children to grow up in this increasingly tense atmosphere, much less to inherit and continue this bloody feuding into their generation.  So we ALL have to work harder for our national healing, through HONEST HEEDING.   Yes, instead of finger-pointing.

Ed Aurelio C. Reyes

Citizen, Republic of the Philippines

President, SanibLakas Foundation   

Makati City, May 3, 2001