A Note on Freedom: Independent, But Still Becoming

A Note on Freedom: Independent, But Still Becoming 

 Issued on the 126th Anniversary of Philippine Independence 

June 12, 2025 

 This is a note—not a declaration. Not a decree. Simply a note, offered quietly from the folds of a nation’s heart. 

 The Philippines is an independent country. That much is fact. The flag was raised, the anthem sung, the colonizer’s rule ended. On paper, sovereignty was secured. But even now—over a century later—there remains a quiet truth that cannot be silenced: this country is still fighting to become a nation that truly determines its own path. 

 What is independence without dignity? Without agency? Without the power to shape policy, economy, and identity on its own terms? 

 There is freedom, yes—but it is partial, conditional, and often borrowed. For all the beauty of its islands and the strength of its people, the Philippines still struggles under the weight of foreign dependence and domestic inequality. Its seas are encroached upon. Its workers are shipped abroad. Its resources, extracted. Its decisions, too often shaped by interests beyond its shores. 

 And so this note speaks—not to celebrate with fanfare, but to remind with quiet resolve: sovereignty is not a single moment, but a continuous motion. 

 It is in the rice farmer asking for fair compensation. In the student demanding education that liberates. In the worker who stays not because they must, but because they choose to. In the leader who serves the flag, not their own pocket. 

 It is easier to say that the Philippines is independent. Easier still to celebrate it in parades and fireworks, with the illusion that the matter is settled. But a harder truth shadows the page: for all its legal sovereignty, the nation often behaves not like a republic charting its own course, but like a cultural community waiting for permission—beholden to the very powers it once defied. 

 Unlike Taiwan, which despite isolation chooses self-definition and stands firm in the face of pressure, the Philippines too often trades resolve for reassurance, policy for patronage. It invokes democracy while deferring to interests that neither vote here nor suffer the consequences of their influence. It speaks of people power, yet waits for others to validate its direction. At times, the question echoes uncomfortably in the national conscience: is the Philippines truly a sovereign state—or has it accepted a softer identity, closer to that of a postcolonial Puerto Rico, where the forms of freedom are present, but not its full weight, nor its responsibility?

 This is not to condemn, but to call. Independence must be more than an inheritance; it must be a decision remade every generation. A republic that forgets how to act as one may find itself adrift—not colonized, but not fully free either. So let this June 12 not mark a finish line, but a call to continue. Let it remind every Filipino—at home and abroad—that independence is not merely about being free from something, but about being free for something: for justice, for truth, for dignity, for nationhood that is lived, not just proclaimed. 

 And if that journey is uphill, then let it be climbed with the same courage that once lit the fires of revolution. This is the note. It is not loud. But it is clear. 

Loose Sand or Rising Soil? - The Filipino’s Search for a National Soul

Loose Sand or Rising Soil?

- The Filipino’s Search for a National Soul

On the 126th anniversary of Philippine independence, the nation pauses to celebrate its freedom. Flags wave proudly, speeches echo in city halls, and parades march with rehearsed precision. Yet beneath the surface of festivity lies a question that time and symbolism have never truly resolved: has the Filipino people grown into their freedom—or merely worn it like an inherited costume? 

A century ago, in 1924, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen observed with brutal honesty that his people, despite their ancient civilization, lacked a national spirit. “They are just a heap of loose sand,” he said. A people divided, vulnerable, and carved up by outside forces. “Other men,” he lamented, “are the carving knife and serving dish; we are the fish and the meat.” It was a chilling metaphor of a country consumed by others because it could not yet stand for itself. 

Today, observers look at the Philippines and see troubling parallels. For all its modern trappings—the skyscrapers, digital infrastructure, and globalized lifestyle—the country remains haunted by old patterns. Power continues to serve entrenched elites; poverty lingers despite decades of development plans; and the national will, if not absent, remains easily fragmented by regionalism, patronage, and personal ambition. 

Like China once was, the Philippines too often appears as an appendage to the interests of others—both local and foreign. Pretentious agreements are signed in glittering rooms, while unjust deals rob the nation quietly in the background. The majority of the population benefits little from the promises of trickle-down economics. Instead, they survive on the margins, in the shadow of a system where opportunity is too often inherited rather than earned. 

To some, this is not a new observation. The early 20th-century writer Miguel Lucio Bustamante described the Filipino character in extremes: the simple farmer content with his carabao and land, and the educated man who, after schooling in Manila, returns to the province full of arrogance, only to bring misfortune upon his household. In both cases, what is absent is ambition for the nation—a larger purpose beyond self, family, or class. 

Despite access to modern education, global networks, and democratic space, the Filipino often remains hesitant to build a cohesive national vision. There is pride in culture, but little unity in direction. Protests are loud but fleeting; elections are passionate but cyclical. The country exports its best labor to care for others abroad, while struggling to uplift its own. 

To compare the Philippines to early 20th-century China may seem harsh—perhaps even accusatory. Yet such comparison is not meant to shame, but to awaken. Sun Yat Sen’s words were not a resignation but a call to transformation. China, after all, did not remain loose sand. Through immense hardship, ideological struggle, and a vision of collective destiny, it forged a new path, however contested or imperfect. 

The Filipino question is therefore not one of capability, but of will. What binds the fisherman in Leyte to the student in Makati, the teacher in Bukidnon to the caregiver in Milan? Where is the national spirit—not as performance, but as daily commitment? What is the dream that unites, not just entertains? 

Too often, it seems, the Filipino identity is reactive—proud in moments of crisis, loud in moments of scandal, but quiet in the long, hard work of nation-building. As a result, the country remains vulnerable to external manipulation, internal exploitation, and generational fatigue. 

And so the central question endures—this Independence Day more than ever: Will the Filipino remain this way? 

Will the people continue as a heap of loose sand—dispersed by every gust of scandal, every wave of imported influence, every political tide? Or will they, at last, become rising soil—solid, fertile, capable of holding a nation’s weight? 

True independence is not merely declared. It is cultivated. 

And the time to cultivate it is now. 

THEY STABBED JUSTICE IN THE BACK!

THEY STABBED JUSTICE IN THE BACK!

In the stillness of night, behind curtains of privilege and velvet impunity, eighteen senators have laid their daggers not only into the Constitution—but into the throat of the Republic itself. 

 They were summoned by duty. They responded with betrayal. They were called to trial. They chose surrender. 

 They have abdicated their role as judges, and embraced the robes of accomplices. They did not follow the Constitution—they abandoned it. They did not seek truth—they extinguished it. What was demanded was judgment. What they offered was complicity. 

 The Constitution said: FORTHWITH. Not RETURN. Not DEFLECT. Not DELAY. And yet they’ve said: “Let the House reconsider.” “Let the next Congress decide.” “Let the courts handle it.” They pass the burden like cowards pass blame. In doing so, they have not only betrayed the people—they have dishonored the very meaning of law. 

 They hide behind procedure like tyrants hide behind banners. 

 And let this note speak clearly: this is no procedural motion. This is a political consolidation. It is the Senate surrendering itself to the Duterte faction. It is the Senate preferring silence over scandal, subservience over struggle, treachery over truth. 

 “Audacity, more audacity, always audacity!” cried Georges Danton before the National Convention in 1792, when the French Republic itself was in peril.[¹] That is what justice demands in times of crisis—not this Senate’s pale cowardice. Danton was calling the people to rise against kings. We call now the people to rise against traitors in suits. 

 And when Robespierre declared, “The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant,”[²] he foresaw what is now being done to us: the suffocation of political memory, the erosion of constitutional obligation, the silencing of the Republic’s conscience. 

 What the Senate has done is not a failure of deliberation. It is a betrayal of people's trust. And through this process is what the Constitution was meant to preserve: a peaceful, principled mechanism for removing those who abuse power. The vice president is accused of high crimes. Instead of proceeding to trial, the Senate slammed shut the doors of judgment and told the people to wait—to forget—to move on. 

 The people will not forget. 

 Tonight’s vote proves that the powerful do not fear guilt—they fear exposure. They do not fear the law—they fear the people watching them uphold it. 

 Let it ring from every rooftop and every street: this is not procedure. This is a putsch in slow motion. This is a crisis in legislative disguise. 

 They did not vote. They stabbed. 

 And the wound will not close—not until the people rise, not until the voice of justice drowns the whispers of cowardice, not until those who worship power are exiled from the temple of democracy. Let justice roar—not whisper. Let the people rise—not wait. Let the traitors tremble—for the Republic remembers. 

 REFERENCES: 

 [¹] Georges Danton, speech to the National Convention, September 2, 1792: “De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace, et la Patrie est sauvée.” (“Audacity, more audacity, always audacity, and the Fatherland is saved.”)

 [²] Maximilien Robespierre, speech to the Convention, 1793. The quote is often paraphrased as: “The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” (See: Robespierre: Political Writings, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, 2007.) 

LOUIE JALANDONI, 90

 LOUIE JALANDONI, 90 

February 26, 1935 – June 7, 2025 

By Kat Ulrike

 It is with profound revolutionary mourning that the passing of Luis "Louie" Jalandoni is announced. A stalwart of the Filipino people’s struggle, a diplomat of the downtrodden, and a beacon of internationalist solidarity, Ka Louie passed away peacefully at 9:05 a.m. on June 7, 2025, in Utrecht, the Netherlands (3:05 p.m. Philippine time). He was 90 years old. 

 In his final moments, he was surrounded by his lifelong comrade and beloved wife Ka Coni, family members, and comrades forged across decades of struggle. His departure marks the end of a historic era—but not the end of the movement to which he devoted his entire life. 

 Born on February 26, 1935, on Negros Island, into a family of landlords and sugar barons, Ka Louie broke from the privileges of his birth. His political awakening came not through theory alone but through contact with sugar workers and peasants in the Visayas. He chose the difficult road of struggle over the comfort of inherited wealth. 

 As a Catholic priest, he served under the Church in the Barrios program, ministering to the poor in the countryside. This path would bring him to a deeper understanding of structural injustice—and into the heart of the people’s movement. He was a founding figure in the Christians for National Liberation (CNL), a courageous group of clergy and religious workers that stood in firm resistance to the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship.

 In 1972, Ka Louie joined the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The following year, the CNL became a founding allied organization of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). As Marcos declared Martial Law, Ka Louie went underground, aligning his life permanently with the revolutionary cause. 

 In 1973, he and Ka Coni were arrested and imprisoned at Fort Bonifacio. For nearly a year, Ka Louie was held in a dark, airless cell, crammed with six or seven others. But repression could not silence the movement. Campaigns by religious and international human rights groups led to their release in July 1974. 

 Exile followed, but not retreat. In 1976, facing renewed threats, Ka Louie and Ka Coni were granted political asylum in the Netherlands, becoming the first Filipinos to receive such recognition. From there, a new phase of struggle began. In 1977, Ka Louie was named international representative of the NDFP, tasked with building solidarity networks, exposing the crimes of the dictatorship, and articulating the vision of national liberation to the world. 

 In 1989, he became the chief negotiator for the NDFP in peace talks with the reactionary Philippine government. In every round of negotiations—from Cory Aquino to Duterte—Ka Louie held fast to the movement’s line: peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice. His work at the negotiating table was never a retreat from struggle, but an extension of it—firm, principled, and unwavering. 

 He endured the collapse of talks, political betrayals, arrests of consultants, and state perfidy with calm resolve and dialectical clarity. Never once did he compromise the integrity of the people’s demands. His commitment to a just peace remained unshaken until the end. 

 Ka Louie’s contributions—diplomatic, strategic, moral—cannot be overstated. He stood as one of the most enduring figures of the Filipino people’s revolutionary history: a priest who became a militant, a detainee who became an exile, and an exile who remained forever bound to the people he served. 

 His life reminds all that to commit to revolution is to surrender not hope but illusion. His death is a loss—but also a legacy. What he helped build cannot be buried. What he stood for continues to rise.

 Ka Louie Jalandoni lives on—in every clenched fist, in every barrio meeting, in every principled stand taken against tyranny. His memory strengthens the movement that shaped him and that he, in turn, helped shape.