Fateful

This is the month when fateful decisions will have to be made.

For months, we allowed the traditional politicians and the old powerbrokers dictate the choices to our voters next May. The forces of reform seemed consigned to the margins, unable to find a rallying point to overcome their many lines of differentiation. The young voters, with their fresh hopes, were merely asked to guard the process — not to override it.

Money politics seemed, once again, the governing logic of our electoral democracy. Those who spent more in the pre-campaign rated well in the popularity polls. It was all a matter of having the cash to buy name-recall.

They tried to draw us into the old, sterile slogan of just throwing out the rascals. They tried to convince us this was a battle between the “administration” and the “opposition” — as if that was the line that separated past from future.

On that false line of distinction, we could not possibly imagine an alternative future for our people. It does not allow us to determinedly continue the good that has been done and terminate the evil that has been inflicted. It does not encourage us to talk about institution-building, policy options and ethical leadership.

That false line of distinction forces us to choose between names and faces equally retrieved from the past. It is a line of distinction that immediately constricts our ability to imagine a preferred future for our people.

We are forced to talk about personalities; not about policies. We are forced to converse about popularity ratings steadily supplied by the polling industry; not about the principles that could possibly bind the latent forces currently in the margins into a great wind of change.

But we may still be able to break the logic of conventional politics that threatens to imprison us. The next few weeks will be decisive.

Over the next few days we expect intensive consultations to happen between the various networks of sincere citizens hoping the best for this country. I am amazed at the great number of old acquaintances renewed over the last two weeks, all volunteering for just one more big fight to change the course of the nation we love.

The networks that will drive the change have always been there, persisting quietly in the arid earth of factional politicking. But the efforts have not yet reached a point of convergence to break the grip of money politics. That may yet happen with the speed by which a new consensus for reform appears to be forming.

We have the moment. We have the shared historical and political memory. We have the tested bonds of trust forged in the days of great battles fought shoulder-to-shoulder.

We have the color for this new coalition for change: the yellow banners we carried into battle before and produced incredible moments of unity in purpose. We possibly have the icon, if he finds the heroism to be so: the man who carries the name of illustrious parents who, in their turn, agreed to be icons of our most fervent hopes.

We are not just asking a man to be president here. The crusade is much larger than one man and one elective position. We are asking this man — Benigno C. Aquino III — to be standard-bearer not of a party but of a reformist coalition far larger than all the electoral factions combined.

We want to elect an alternative future not just a personality. We want to elect an option; not just another cabal.

We do not have to gather for photo opportunities, clenching our fists or waving some finger-sign. Such events are intended only to signal who are in and who are out.

The more urgent thing is mechanism for a crusade that is inclusive and encompassing. That mechanism, I have told like-minded friends over the weekend, has to be a website with a custom-designed software that will enable this movement to be at once self-directed and capable of coordinating tens of thousands of grassroots volunteers helping remold the future from where they stand.

We do not need huge rallies staged at great expense merely for the purpose of capturing media attention. We need to be able to coordinate the actions of hundreds of thousands of activists operating independently but with a unified vision.

It is a people’s crusade not a political party that will bring forth the forces of change. It is a crusade fully conscious of the goals that unite the forces of change and will be capable of exacting accountability from whatever government we install in May 2010. It must be a crusade united not by a personality cult but by a strongly shared set of values.

Repeat: the personality who will make this possible is merely the icon, the lightning rod that collects the electricity in the air. He must begin to serve knowing fully well he will never supplant the movement. He is a creature of destiny, product of a historical conjuncture, not an appointee of the gods.

His humility he must guard most jealously. It is hubris that unravels everything.

Sometime towards the end of the month, the networks must come together physically to signal the start of the march towards a new future. I humbly suggest we anoint this gathering Kongreso ng Mamamayang Pilipino III (Kompil III).

What fitting way to both honor memory and rekindle the spirit that animated two previous uprisings waged peacefully in Democracy’s name. What fitting way to draw from the imagery and spirit that allowed people’s power to do great things.

Then we can turn the looming electoral contest on its head, transforming a contest between factions of power-brokers into a grand moment for popular intervention, seizing this fateful event from the politicians and handing it back to the people.