The "Revolt of the Poor" continues still
As everyone started to make various comments and rants about the 30th anniversary of the revolt at EDSA, it seems that the right to dissent is one of the most important legacies ever given in that event, all after the years wherein dissent was as tantamount to imprisonment or even death.
However, that dissent against the present administration is ranging from those who really opposed the system and its policies, to those who just for chrissakes opposing the head of state and his clique because of their blatant bullshit that has been happening day by day. And this person? Sees both of it as somewhat the same, yet in different view coming from these personages left and right.
To look back at those times, people from all walks of life were tired of policies imposed by the Marcos regime be it economic, political, or socio-cultural. True it may be that the administration had built brudges and roads, hospitals and schools, that there was growth and development, yet, on the other hand, that growth and development was debt-driven that until today everyone has to pay that goddamn debt that continues to grow thanks to those succeeding administrators who also believe that in loans means chances of development- or most likely in their colleagues's pockets and purses.
True it may be that the past administration had tried to cultivate discipline and reviving lost dignity, a revisit to traditional values, if not a return to old, rural norms as part of cultural policy. Quite nice so to speak about these, and yet to think that there were numerous issues on torture, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, social injustices and the like, the word discipline was more of an alibi for fear: the way Pinochet, Soeharto, Ognania, Videla, and other strongmen did all for the sake of reorganisation and to accomodate various forms of support from the United States using "freedom and democracy" as its pretext.
For sure one would remember military agents inside campuses, trying to stamp down dissent even to the slightest one such as complaining about rising costs of tuition fees or insulting the first family in case of Archimedes Trajano over Imee Marcos.
Such numerous issues has been generating dissent, that even until today, the strain of the past, like its earlier ones, has continue to aggravate be it from the peasant at Hacienda Luisita, Worker from Tanduay Distilleries, or a Student from the University of the East whose yearly tuition hikes and forms of campus repression creates a problem. Apologetics may babble PD 21, yet that scope was limited to rice and corn, was sugarcane included? Nope. Apologetics may also babble educational development, but how about the Education Act of 1982 that paved way to rising costs of tuition and other fees if not commercialisation of educational institutions? So was the so-called 13th month pay that has fforded to brag and yet hearing news about strikes like La Tondeña, Bataan, to those of Rustan's.
These problems that continue till the present day is an example of what Marcos had said. And these are manifestations of what he called as "Revolt of the Poor" that the Government tries to contain, control, if not to stop altogether with paper reforms and staming out dissent. True it may be that his government by decree had created an atmosphere of "Revolution" only to see its intensification as shown by its popular representation such as street protests in the city if not armed offensives in the countryside. The massive projects that has made the country given a semblance of development failed to appease a populace whom been affected by rising costs of goods and services, various forms of social injustices brought by unfair economic policies, if not torture and death because of its beliefs if not their reactions from issues such as this person stated.
Worse, what makes these repressive and unjust measures and policies dangerous is that they are given sugarcoated alibis be it developement, progress, or even change, with all its various decrees tailor-made just to appease the affected sectors yet obviously benefits landed genteries and the like; what more of seeing apologetics paid to insist the "just-ness" of administrators be it from the "new society" to today's "righteous path".
But so long as the decades old situation prevails, of landed gentries trying to keep their interests, the revolt of the poor continues still, and will surely succeed so as to realise the promise of justice, land, bread, and jobs for the still-suffering Filipinos sedated by illusions and false promises.