How many more wake up calls do we need?

It was definitely a disturbing weekend when Lieutenant Senior Grade Antonio Trillianes IV and 296 officers and men of the Armed Forces held what is now known as the "Oakwood Coup" which started early evening of Saturday and ended late Sunday evening. But by Sunday evening, no less than President Arroyo declared "The Makati crisis is over!"

But while we congratulate the Arroyo Administration in their very professional handling of this crisis against misguided soldiers, however, I dare say that the crisis maybe over in Makati, which allowed her to make her State of the Nation Address (SONA), we have to accept that our nation’s crisis is far from over! Looking at the root cause of our ills, I must say that aside from an endemic top-to-bottom corruption (we must accept that corruption in the media is just as bad!), it is this nation’s "double standard" culture. When an ordinary man is caught carrying an unlicensed pistol, he gets a jail term. But when a coup is waged against the established authority of this nation, the coup leaders are elected into public office! Where’s justice there?

As the President said in her SONA, the leaders who participated in the Oakwood Coup are going to jail – definitely a heftier punishment – unlike in the Manila Hotel coup where the rebel soldiers merely got push ups. Indeed the ordinary Filipino just can’t understand why we’re having so many coups, after coups after coups and why we can’t stop them from happening? The reason of course is elementary, no one involved in coups is languishing in any jail, hence, it is not difficult to concoct another one in the near future.

Meanwhile, the business sector led by Donald Dee of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) quipped that the Oakwood coup is another wake-up call for Filipinos. Wake up call? How many more wake up calls does this country need after EDSA one, two and what more? How about the last celebration of the EDSA revolt? Wasn’t that a wake up call that no one went there except those who had to?

I have always believed that the easiest persons to wake up are those who are fast asleep and the most difficult are those who are pretending to be asleep! Pinoys in my book are people pretending to be asleep. We pretend that the unabated corruption doesn’t hurt us or that patronage politics is healthy for this nation. We ask you again, how many more wake up calls do we need for us to change our ways? Should we Filipinos be contended in running this country like hell the way it has always been since the Americans granted us Independence on July 4, 1946?

While we condemn the Oakwood incident, we submit that many concerns brought forth by our soldiers need to be addressed seriously. One, that they are really fighting another war, the war against poverty, where many soldiers can easily relate to because they belong to that sector. Yet in the battlefield, they are fighting the poor Filipinos who were probably lured to the empty promises of communism, when the real problem can be traced to Manila’s internal colonialism?

Much attention is given to the needs of Metro Manila with their maze of mass transit systems costing in the billions of pesos, while the government forgets the rural folk who fall prey to communist ideologues. After all, we have soldiers to die for us! Perhaps this is the very reason why our soldiers are confused. It seems that they no longer want to risk their lives defending a nation ruled by the corrupt and the damned. I recall this happened to US soldiers who fought in Vietnam. I think it was called the Vietnam War Syndrome. Surely by now, our soldiers realize that coups in this archipelagic nation have no real hope of success. They can capture Malacanang Palace, but not the entire country. I’m positive that the misguided soldiers who participated in the Oakwood coup didn’t really want to take over the government, they just want to fight the real enemy – corruption and poverty – and let me add anarchy!

Yes indeed, the real enemy is ourselves… the Filipino people! With election fever starting to infect all Filipinos, again, I reiterate my concern that we Filipinos are so engrossed in ugly politics to the point of our taking sides with our favorite politico, even if that politico doesn’t have any damn idea of how to solve our nation’s ills. This is what we’ve been harping all along, that it is time for us to fix the 57-year old badly-battered Philippine Bus, but alas, we’re so pre-occupied with merely changing the driver.

Too much ugly politics has definitely ruined this nation! But there’s hope, if only we move towards a Constitutional Convention and install a federal form of government, which would give our indigenous people a chance to charter their own destinies within a democratic framework under one nation. Alas, real change through a democratic framework under a con-con wasn’t even given a line of recognition by the President in her SONA .

Anyway, I read Martin Lee’s article about the problems plaguing Hongkong in the July 28th issue of Time Magazine at the last page, and yes, we have an uncanny similarity with Hongkong. His article is entitled, "System Failure… Hong Kong needs not just a change of leadership, but a total overhaul". While Martin Lee was referring to Hong Kong, this statement can very well be used for the Philippines where we need a real overhaul!

If you read on, there’s something that the late Chinese leader (the architect of what is China today and of course, the One-China. Two systems that’s running Hong Kong today) Deng Xiaoping once said, "With a Good System, even Evil men cannot do Evil. Without a Good System, even good men cannot do good, but may be forced to do Evil." I’m sure, even the most hardcore homegrown communist ideologues here would easily understand this.

Taken from the "thoughts of Deng", this is exactly what’s wrong with the Philippines today, our system is so bad, so corrupt, even the good is forced to be as evil or as corrupt. We need to put in place a better system of governance whereby, as Deng says, "even Evil men, cannot do Evil".

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow entitled, "Straight from the Sky" shown every Monday only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 on SkyCable at 8 p.m.