ang saklap maging Pilipino
katrina stuart santiago
i’m sure there is truth to much of what PNoy said in that SONA — propaganda after all, as with press releases, have the facts that we need so that a google search should reveal those to be true. and of course the State of the Nation is the nation according to the government’s statistics, numbers always look better than real life, and that isn’t new either.
PNoy should really just stop pretending that he is different from GMA, when he sounds exactly like her, speaks of the state of the nation the way she always has. we should also just stop expecting more from him, even more so putting words in his mouth: the stand on responsible parenthood IS NOT a pro-reproductive health stand, anobah.
save for better speech writing, there is nothing different about the way the SONA is about the president patting himself on the back while keeping the more powerful among us — the Church, the capitalists | oligarchs | landlords, those who commit extrajudicial murders — happy.
and of course PNoy doesn’t care how the police are treating the activists holding their own SONA ng Bayan outside congress. of course he doesn’t care, that if there’s anything that reeks of his similarity to GMA, it’s that the police have been given this power to hit activists, watch them bleed, and hit them some more. and PNoy and the police get away with this because they will easily and constantly have the middle and upper classes on their side when it comes to these “rabid Left” they so despise!
but i dare anyone who went to EDSA Dos to kick Erap out: what did you think of rallying then? what did you think of the Left you were at EDSA Dos with? what did you think of occupying the streets and fighting for your right to kick out a president — illegal as it turned out to be, and having GMA as a horrid replacement in the end?
see, what this reveals really is that when it’s you, with no clear ideological leaning other than capitalism and consumerism, or whatever other advocacy you might have, who decides to use the streets to fight for your rights, rallies are ok. when you benefit from stepping out into the streets, when you see your friends doing it to boot, not to mention those on your FB timeline, it’s suddenly fashionable to go rally.
and when it’s about real concrete valid issues of what goes on in nation beyond those government statistics, when it is about real hunger and poverty, when it is about a president that has spent money on celebrating his own achievements, you would rather side with the latter. when it’s about issues that are so deeply ingrained in the follies of our systemic dysfunctions, when it is about unjust practices long being committed by government, it’s not about the streets for you.
you consciously forget that to go out to the streets is our right, one that you invoke when it’s convenient for you, or fashionable to do so.
and then really one can’t help but wonder, what is there to fear about activists moving closer and closer to the gates of Congress?
in fact since PNoy says the people are his boss, then doesn’t that make the SONA ng Bayanthe real state of the nation?
