Sambayanang Pilipino

Sambayanang Pilipino. The way I understand it, from my hopelessly Cebuano-oriented frame of mind, is that the term means the Filipino nation. If my interpretation is correct, then it refers to all Filipinos.

I bring this term up because the term Sambayanang Pilipino has frequently been used by the obstinately self-righteous members of the political opposition to justify and lend weight to whatever it is that fancies them at a given moment.

After the House of Representatives voted to kill the impeachment complaints against President Arroyo, all the earth-bound saints, in thinly-veiled threats, promised to bring the Sambayanang Pilipino out into the streets.

I do not know how the saints can confuse a few thousand marchers in Manila who look like they needed to earn some money by whatever means with the millions of other Filipinos outside the capital who are wondering what the hell is happening.

For instance, in Cebu, which has a population of nearly three million, nobody is taking to the streets demanding the ouster of the president, except of course the usual leftists who, as of last count, number anywhere between 17 and 23.

Does the ordinariness of life in Cebu, meaning this refusal of Cebuanos to be counted along with the rallyists-for-hire in Manila, effectively makes them outsiders when the term Sambayanang Pilipino is invoked.

Does Sambayanang Pilipino then refer only to those who want to remove the president by whatever means? If so, what does that make of the rest of the Filipinos? Are they people without a country? Refugees in a strange land?

Look, not by any stretch of the imagination can the few thousand opposition-led rallyists in Manila be called Sambayanang Pilipino. They are Filipinos, to be sure, but they are the ugly kind. And they do not comprise the entire nation.

This invocation of the term Sambayanang Pilipino should stop. We who comprise the majority, even if we prefer to be peaceful and silent, resent the expropriation of the term to our exclusion.

We are just as Filipino as everybody else even if we prefer not to get caught up in the passions being whipped by opposition politicians who are pursuing what now appears to be a not-so-hidden agenda.

And this resentment should serve as a fair warning to those who dare use our name without our consent. Already, there are stirrings in the provinces of a willingness to break away, not just in protest but in disgust.

In Davao City, its firebrand of a mayor, Rodrigo Duterte, has already served notice that he and other local government officials in Mindanao have met and considered declaring a breakaway republic in case the political opposition in Manila succeeds in ousting the president.

This feeling is not only alive in Mindanao. In Cebu City, Mayor Tomas Osmeña has issued a similar threat. Right now, such threats may seem implausible. But they reflect a real feeling which, if stoked long and hard enough by sufficient provocation, can erupt into a raging flame.

People outside Manila have grown sick and tired of being thrust into situations dictated by actions that they were never a part of. A few dozen misguided politicians, backed by a few thousand leftists and paid do-nothings cannot ram a way of life down our throats.

A fair and urgent warning should be given that the real Sambayanang Pilipino is like a sleeping giant that must not be awakened. Institutions in this country are crumbling. Filipinos are not happy with their lives. The mood is ripe for a tiny spark to set off a conflagration.