WHY WE CAN’T ‘MOVE ON’ By: Randy David - @inquirerdotnet Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:06 AM August 26, 2018
…The martial law regime was overthrown in 1986. The patriarch is dead. No Marcos is in jail. The bulk of the family’s wealth is intact. Clearly, the scions of the Marcos family have all moved on. So, why, indeed, can’t the rest of the country stop talking about the crimes committed under martial law? Why can’t we “move on”? Why do we remember?
The reasons are many, but for lack of space we can mention only two of these here. First, because the clash between remembering and forgetting cannot be reduced to a feud between the Marcoses and the Aquinos. The issue is between a repressive regime that took advantage of the people’s yearning for a better life, and a nation that pinned its hopes on the charisma and political will of a strongman. The more important conflict is between dictatorship as a form of rule and the practicability of democratic governance in a young nation such as ours.
Second, we cannot move on because dictatorship is not a thing of the past. It remains very much alive, feeding upon the despair and resentment of a gullible public. It thrives in every area of modern governance where the staggering complexity of social problems permits no easy solutions, and where the exercise of authoritarian political will takes the place of reflective and rational planning.
…one can say that the authoritarianism of Marcos was very different from that of Duterte’s. Marcos had a long view of his place in the nation’s history and a broad program of what he wanted to achieve, whereas Duterte cannot seem to go beyond his war on drugs and crime.
But, what ties them together is the easy resort to the means of state violence, which they share—to a point where both seem to equate action with the ability to make and enforce decisions, using fear and intimidation as the preferred weapon. Many have died and many have suffered because of the self-righteousness by which state violence has been deployed.
The present state of affairs sanctions plunder in government service, especially at the highest levels. We cannot ‘move on’ by condoning these commonplace abusive conditions of governance.
Public domain photo
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Gonzalinho
Aphorisms – credits:
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Gonzalinho
WHY WE CAN’T ‘MOVE ON’
ReplyDeleteBy: Randy David - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:06 AM August 26, 2018
…The martial law regime was overthrown in 1986. The patriarch is dead. No Marcos is in jail. The bulk of the family’s wealth is intact. Clearly, the scions of the Marcos family have all moved on. So, why, indeed, can’t the rest of the country stop talking about the crimes committed under martial law? Why can’t we “move on”? Why do we remember?
The reasons are many, but for lack of space we can mention only two of these here. First, because the clash between remembering and forgetting cannot be reduced to a feud between the Marcoses and the Aquinos. The issue is between a repressive regime that took advantage of the people’s yearning for a better life, and a nation that pinned its hopes on the charisma and political will of a strongman. The more important conflict is between dictatorship as a form of rule and the practicability of democratic governance in a young nation such as ours.
Second, we cannot move on because dictatorship is not a thing of the past. It remains very much alive, feeding upon the despair and resentment of a gullible public. It thrives in every area of modern governance where the staggering complexity of social problems permits no easy solutions, and where the exercise of authoritarian political will takes the place of reflective and rational planning.
…one can say that the authoritarianism of Marcos was very different from that of Duterte’s. Marcos had a long view of his place in the nation’s history and a broad program of what he wanted to achieve, whereas Duterte cannot seem to go beyond his war on drugs and crime.
But, what ties them together is the easy resort to the means of state violence, which they share—to a point where both seem to equate action with the ability to make and enforce decisions, using fear and intimidation as the preferred weapon. Many have died and many have suffered because of the self-righteousness by which state violence has been deployed.
Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/115631/why-we-cant-move-on#ixzz5PEmNDBeZ
The present state of affairs sanctions plunder in government service, especially at the highest levels. We cannot ‘move on’ by condoning these commonplace abusive conditions of governance.
Gonzalinho