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.