Parallelisms

President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino had a dictator before her term. Her son, PNoy, had a predecessor described as “worse than the dictator.” Both mother and son had to battle the ghost of their predecessors during their terms.

 For Cory, that meant going after ill-gotten wealth as well as trying to find the mastermind of her husband, Ninoy’s assassination. For her son, PNoy, this means tracing the trail and depth of corruption, at PCSO, in other government agencies, including the military.

 His mother, Cory, was plagued by several attempted military coups. Gratefully, PNoy has been spared these within his first year. With the various exposes that will certainly impact on the abusive and the corrupt, will future coups be part of the immediate horizon? We hope not, we pray not.

 However, Judas needed only 30 silver pieces to trade in our Lord. This time around, will our country witness more heroes than adventurists who will help in the campaign to establish peace and turn this country around towards genuine prosperity and towards a more moral nation? We hope so, we pray so.

 Both Cory and PNoy had Hacienda Luisita as an issue during their terms. For Cory, there was high expectation that she would begin genuine agrarian reform by distributing Hacienda Luisita to their tenants. She, however, begged off saying the land was for her children to decide upon.

 Now, it is one of her children, her son Noynoy, who is President. He is asked, like his mother before him, to start the genuine path to agrarian reform in our country by resolving the issue of Hacienda Luisita in favor of the hopeful tenants. PNoy is wont to say, like his mother before him, that the fate of Hacienda Luisita is not in his hands but in his siblings and the rest of the Cojuangco clan.

 If that be so, then can PNoy’s siblings, can Cory’s children and their other Cojuangco relatives be prevailed to be the first family to genuinely declare land for the landless and give up Hacienda Luisita? That will be a very symbolic beginning for our people, for our farmers, for our nation. Will genuine agrarian reform start with Hacienda Luisita, in the term of another Cojuangco-Aquino? We hope so, we pray so.

 It is sound advice for PNoy to move on beyond the ghosts of the past. He and his team are wise to focus on the needs of the millions who entrusted them with their votes and faith. No government can fail if the genuine focus of their efforts and resources will be sustainable food, homes, jobs for the needy, at the very least and education, health and other welfare services for all.

 Hence, we are very happy to be corrected by the recent survey of the Social Weather Stations that reported the decrease in the number of our hungry people, down to 3 million families from the former 4.1 million families, the best figure ever since 2007!

 PNoy and his anti-poverty team should be congratulated for moving one million families out of hunger within a year into his term! We pray more anti-poverty projects will sustainably be implemented so that within PNoy’s 6-year term, there will be no more hungry in this country!

 We hope the anti-hunger programs translate into sustainable food production and employment schemes so that our people will never have to go hungry at all, ever.

 Our historical experience has shown us that dependence on investments and trade, whether local or foreign, has not made our people self-reliant and prosperous. There are many former activists in PNoy’s team who, in their youth, recognized that the roots of our national problems are linked to foreign dependence and continuation of our unequal social class system.

 Given that, we hope the direction of the new administration moves towards more faith and trust in our own people’s resources and initiatives for producing goods and services that are MATCHED WITH THE NEEDS of our own people, not with the needs of a global market.

 We also hope that the political and educational systems will also be re-oriented to match the needs of our own Filipino people, not to ape and to be modeled upon some other foreign country’s systems.

 His father, Ninoy, had this impossible dream of seeing this country and our people truly free. Cory tried to restore democracy after the dictatorship but without really going to the core of installing more equitable and more Filipino-appropriate systems of governance. Their son, Noynoy and his siblings, are now given another historic opportunity to finally install effective mechanisms for sustainable, equitable development for our people.

 Will PNoy lead his family and our nation towards the fulfillment of their father’s “impossible dream?” We hope so, we pray so.

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