Gloria resign?
People Power of 86 will turn 22 in two days. Yet I am not so certain that the lessons of the past have firmly taken root. During the heyday of the first EDSA revolution we’ve seen a motley exercise of direct democracy. Filipinos wanted a revolution of sorts, and revolution they did. We had more than the usual dose of liberality and people sovereignty that we can ever hope to handle.
From a surfeit of democracy in the last twenty years, people power spills over the streets today just as it had before. Only this time it is more of a shallow talismanic attachment to nostrums unaligned with present contexts than it is sincere. The slogans are repetitive. The ideas bland and uninspired. The calls mute and dismal. The participants unimanigative hypocrites. Talk the talk, but talk pro forma not with substance. I wonder whether there’s a default template of the expedited logic that if X is bad, X must resign written in our genes. Is the ability to jump to hasty conclusions hereditary? Or has EDSA I nurtured us to think and act that way?
I find that saying gloria resign grates my throat. Not because that I shout it often but saying it once is already one too many. Gloria resign: what silly subterfuge! As if the minute phrase carries the power to fix our problems in one deft stroke. I would sooner spend the saliva on a bad recit in class than on silly one-liner-whiners.
Gloria resign. It’s not so easy as that. We take one step forward, we take a million steps back. That does not make sense. It’s a poor trade-off of efforts if you ask me. Whereas, the nexus between gloria and all our current misery is broken and vague but why persist on drawing the connection? There is not the necessary link that sets the motion to an unbroken chain of events from gloria to why there are snatchers in the UP fair or why on earth people are rude.
GMA is to the Philippines as the godfather is to the mafia is poor syllogism. I’m sorry UP Law. I’m afraid I can not join you in your grand parade this once. I break out steam by reading funny stories like why druglords still live with their mothers. As such, I do not just take to the streets because the posters say that I should. There are other forces at play here. To look for these forces in the streets is an exercise in futility.
And come on. If gloria is really the problem then why can’t we hire someone to snuff the life out of her? Let’s go find out how much truth there is in the gloria rhetoric. But I guess no one’s that convinced to do such a thing. Of course I’m BEING stupid. Well, I can’t say that most of us aren’t.
