[OPINION] The elephant in the room: How do we stop the killings?
What is embedded above is Joel Pablo Salud’s first piece after he joined Rappler as Senior Desk Editor. What follows below is F. Sionil Jose’s Philippine Star column dated July 20, 2020 where he writes about what comes next after the denial of ABS-CBN’s franchise application. The Philippine Start doesn’t allow links on their website to be embedded which is why I have to reproduce Jose’s column in full.
Compare and contrast the writing of the two. Jose wanted to be a writer since adolescence while Salud stumbled into journalism as a profession, after what he describes as a turbulent adolescence and early adulthood. Jose is formally trained. Salud is not.
The national artist for literature was “canceled” by opposition stalwarts for his stand on the closure of ABS-CBN and his praise for Duterte; praise which was not wholesale. Manong Frankie had been either on Duterte’s side or against him, depending on the issue. His praise was ebullient in the days after Duterte assumed the Presidency. His stand changed after Marcos was finally buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Salud styles himself as a revolutionary. His son is even named after Lenin. He and his leftist-militant journalism cohorts led by Inday Espina Varona, think of themselves are French bohemian socialists, adopting their style of wearing a beret, the Mao hat and the cafe society which goes along with it. Intellectuals who are pseudo-intellectuals, validating themselves by posting pictures on social media of what they’re currently reading or have read, with their book cases as background, to further reinforce the claim. This is a veritable admission of insecurity; a constant need for validation is evident. This is why like Richard Heydarian, Salud’s articles are peppered with quotes from famous authors on various subjects. There is the constant need to to be a head above the crowd.
Jose was “canceled” by these leftist-liberals because he spoke of the truth. There is the irrefutable proof that authoritarianism works. Just look at our other Asian neighbors. China succeeded in eliminating poverty in the shortest possible time. Vietnam is well on its way to achieving the same. South Korea was a dictatorship until it evolved into a democracy which jails corrupt Presidents. Look at Taiwan which came before China under Chiang Kai Shek. Manong Frankie subscribed to Duterte’s revolution until it came to the issue of the Marcos’, which for him, was non-negotiable. Yet, he didn’t devote his time and efforts to crucify the Marcos’. He spoke of the truth as well – history will not be the judge of the Marcos’ but the Filipino people, in an election.
This is the essence of the fourth estate and of public intellectuals. Inform the people and let them decide. There is no need to ram an opinion down their throats and make it as God’s honest truth. Vox populi, Vox dei.
We have been left behind by our Asian neighbors because of society and culture. It has its roots in our mindset, born of our being colonized by the Spaniards and Americans, who erased the foundation of a our culture, made possible by the fact that it hadn’t completed the evolutionary process of civilization.
Seth Mydans wrote in the New York Times obituary for F. Sionil Jose:
F. Sionil Jose, the author of a dozen socially engaged novels and countless short stories and essays who was sometimes called the grand old man of Philippine letters, and even the conscience of his nation, died on Thursday in Manila. He was 97.
Mr. Jose’s family said he died at Makati Medical Center, where he had been awaiting an angioplasty operation.
Passionately committed to social justice, Mr. Jose often wrote of his anguish over what he saw as his country’s failure to overcome centuries of Spanish colonization, followed by further domination by the United States.
His novels, rich in themes and scenes drawn from his own peasant beginnings, amounted to a continuing morality play about the poverty and class divisions of the Philippines, a nation seemingly in thrall to fiefs, oligarchies and political dynasties.
We should add to the last paragraph false patriots such as the liberal-left who continue to play footsies with oligarchs and political dynasts in order to survive as a power bloc in the social and political environment.
Agyamanak Manong Frankie. Dios ti angina.
The Chinese revolution started in the 1920s with Sun Yat Sen and succeeded only in 1949. The Vietnamese revolution started in 1945 and ended only in 1975. The Mexican revolution took about the same length of time. The revolutions that took only a decade or so – the Cuban, the French and the Russian – are exceptions.
Then, when power has finally been transferred from the oppressor to the oppressed in this period of reconstruction, the revolutionaries are replaced by entrepreneurs and administrators; it takes at the very least one generation or twenty five years for a country to modernize. This was the period when Singapore, developed under Lee Kuan Yew, when it broke away from Malaysia. It is the same thing with the development of South Korea that started with the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee and with the modernization of Taiwan which developed from its colonial economy after Chiang Kai-shek retreated to the island with lessons from his failure in the mainland, modernized Taiwan. We can never be sure what the revolution will spawn – a Napoleon, a Stalin or a Mao? Whatever – the conclusion of history is this: the ultimate modernizer is the revolutionary.
So, we ask, what now?
The fall of ABS-CBN illustrates how a motivated Congress can achieve so much. That motivation should be in the bureaucracy, most importantly, by the justice system. And the first and most immediate action that all must understand is that the pandemic also gives us the opportunity to rethink and even change perhaps those institutions that obstruct development. As for that anemic batch of landlords called the Makati Business Club, it must now be a pillar in modernizing the country by engaging in productive enterprises, in the manufacture of goods for 100 million Filipinos – a mass market that is so obviously unexploited. We have a very large labor force, a lot of it technically proficient particularly the many overseas workers who are returning. The possibilities in agri-industry are so many, the exploitation of our agriculture, derivative products. For instance, excellent Philippine rum should dominate the world market. Ditto with our cigars.
Our capitalists must abandon being landlords, with the minds of landlords waiting only for their share of the harvest and for the rent. Like I always said, Japan has very little arable land and its real resources are its people. And most of all, Singapore – which is the richest country in Southeast Asia with no natural resources other than its industrious people – is led by incorruptible and visionary leaders. Do I sound like a broken record?
For sure, I had hoped that the Lopez Empire would be toppled, but I actually did not think it would happen for I only know too well the vast resources that the Lopez family holds.
Sure, Duterte was, from the very beginning, against ABS-CBN, but as we know, he has only two years left, and it is much too late for members of Congress to harry favor from him. What I am concluding is that, among our politicians, there are still many who are firm with courage and integrity and who have acted on the dictates of their conscience and their perceived aspirations of the Filipino people. We must remember them in the next election.
On a personal level, I find it so difficult to rail against the Lopezes. Oscar Lopez is so unassuming and decent; in the late Sixties, I shared a room with him for four days at a conference in Davao. I am very fond of his daughter, Mercedes, the curator of the Lopez Museum, founded by her grandfather, Eugenio, Sr., as a testament to his nationalism. I told her the Museum is her family’s legacy to the country – she should care for it, enlarge it.
The Lopezes can always come back, but they will no longer have the credibility and the clout that they once had. They still have billions to invest in productive enterprises, billions with which to resurrect their tarnished reputation.
I understand the tenacity of human rights believers when they equate the erosion of those rights with Duterte’s ambition, and with Duterte, the death of democracy. These believers are thinking only of themselves, their welfare, blind to the autocratic leaders in the region who brought progress to their people. How does one explain China – its progress now, its longevity? Human rights in China were always glossed over by the traditional compulsion towards hierarchy and harmony. In the end, above all this noise and raucous clamor for press freedom by a few is wasted passion, what truly matters is, do we truly love our country.
So, what now?
This pandemic, or any crisis, challenges us to work harder in order to survive and our leaders to lead selflessly and create new institutions that will strengthen our Filipino society to replace the old ones that have decayed. This will then be the new normal when this pandemic ends.
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