Youths in revolt
January 19, 2001. It was the fourth day of the people’s uprising. A revolution that people would claim as one led by the youth. With a group of college friends, we marched to EDSA to protest and pressure a joke of a president to step down. The crowd was a sight to see and it was hard to believe that the handful of people that marched to this very place during the last night of the impeachment trial have now ballooned to hundreds of thousands. It was a festive protest that was interspersed every now and then with prayer, patriotic songs, and Erap jokes. Suddenly, the seething emotions of anger and ridicule were rudely interrupted when we were asked to make way for a group of men dressed in crisp green uniform who would like to say something on the stage. It was Gen. Angelo Reyes with other high-ranking officials of the Philippine Army announcing their withdrawal of support from the beleaguered President. People cheered as chants of “Sundalo ng bayan, ngayo’y naninindigan!” started to echo right in the middle of EDSA. Cell phones carried the same message that the protest was over and the Filipinos were victorious once again with their peaceful revolution. As we were ecstatic over the people’s victory, most of us didn’t really understand how and why the withdrawal of support of this general signaled the end of the Estrada administration.
Ten years later, the man who was so admired and honored then for his bravery and loyalty to the country celebrated his moment in history not in the streets of EDSA but inside the dull halls of the Senate. He is now being accused of corruption and betrayal of public trust, the very same reasons he cited in his withdrawal of support for his commander-in-chief then. Given a chance to rebuff his accuser, the only questions he was able to muster went along the lines of “Was I too greedy when I was in office?” If only Vice Ganda was on the other side of the table, he would have heard a thing or two about his admirable skill of asking rhetorical questions.
Ten years later, the idealistic youth in me is still expecting an apology from this general and his commander-in-chief. An apology that would acknowledge the great opportunity wasted during EDSA II, when the usually apathetic youth left their comfort zones and participated in a peaceful and democratic exercise of civil disobedience. The idea, after all, is not too far-fetched. The late US President Richard Nixon, after the Watergate scandal, was somehow able to recover at least an ounce of respect from the American people with an apology that says, “I’m sorry I let down my friends, I let down the country, I let down our system of government and the dreams of all those young people who ought to get into government but will think it’s all corrupt. I let the American people down and I will have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life.”
Alas, the American-educated Gen. Reyes may have imbibed the accent and fluency of his teachers but not their admirable love and loyalty for the motherland.
These days, despite a credible election, many young students continue to walk out of their classrooms and shout their beliefs and convictions about state university budget cuts, foreign policy, and domestic goods and transport fare price hikes. It is well and good for the youth to be involved in today’s issues and make what is hopefully a reasonable stand. Angelo Reyes, however, has taught an important lesson to the young activists then and now, and that is protest movements are led by people driven by their own political motives and ambitions. Be it a forgetful general waiting for his pabaon, a vice president itching to control the nation’s coffers or even a communist leader seeking to destabilize the government under the guise of fighting for the poor and weak in society. The actuations of Reyes and Arroyo have unfortunately made a failure of the previous generation’s attempt of changing the country for the better. Karl Marx reminds this generation’s youth, “All revolutions have only served to perfect this machine instead of smashing it.”
The burden of seeking new ways to reform the country now rests in the hands of our youth.
