Katrina Stuart Santiago

It seems apt that the last State of the Nation Address of the worst, most violent, most incompetent president of our lifetime happened right smack in the middle of a vicious Delta variant that State propaganda denies is spreading, 17 months into the Covid-19 pandemic and government’s failed, unscientific, anti-people response.

It also happened after almost a week of endless rains that have sunk the poorest of our communities in flood waters. Which followed a Taal Volcano eruption that meant whole communities being forced to evacuate. Two days before the SONA, there was a level six earthquake in the wee hours of the morning.

None of these warranted an appearance from this president. Then again, that might have been a good thing: after all he thinks cracking jokes in the middle of a crisis is okay, and he believes that every problem can be solved by police presence—just like he finds comfort in IATF briefings filled with retired military generals who know nothing about science or medicine, pandemic response or public health.

Propaganda lang malakas
In the five years of Duterte the only thing it has maintained, has done well, and has succeeded in is its propaganda machinery. It’s so so good that those of us on the side of democracy like to deny it exists, if not like to deny the kind of power it has. Our denial of course is part of why Duterte has stayed in power despite our anger and disgust, the movements we have fashioned. There is no winning a war we are in denial about. (more…)

Since Duterte became President, consistently undoing democracy, constantly violating people’s rights, just generally trampling on all our freedoms, and swinging the pendulum to the extreme of no accountability and no transparency, layered with flagrant lies and utter incompetence, I’ve held out for Generation X.

This is not some blind, baseless assessment of what it is my generation can do. Instead, it comes from a very keen sense of where we’ve come from, what is at stake for us, and the kind of future we still want. So many of us after all have families of our own, children who will grow up in this nation we all love to hate but love regardless, and one would like to think that there are enough of us who cannot imagine leaving.

Pinning my hopes on middle class Generation X is also based on recent history. At another time when we were fighting for freedom, a civil society of private citizens, the Church, schools, businesses rose in this country and worked together towards taking back democracy. They built a civil disobedience campaign that paralyzed businesses run by the dictator’s cronies, they boycotted San Miguel Beer and Magnolia Ice Cream, pulled out their cash from crony banks, stopped shopping in Rustan’s.

We are the generation born to parents and grandparents who made this happen. And we are this generation that might have been in a great crisis of apathy in the mid-90’s, but—I’d like to think—was really about getting our head together about nation. What is wrong with it, given the status quo it keeps, and the possibilities for re-imagining the ways of circumventing it.

But then the pandemic happened.

(more…)

Is what we know of the certainty of light. As in the impulse to unite on shared battles, the ones so crucial they survive the passage of time, are embraced across generations, as it was brought to bear on that moment 75 years ago, when the Philippine flag flew highest in the air for the first time.

Is what we know of our capacity to create light. Despite, or because of fear. Spreading photocopied stories on the real state of the nation; supporting a free press that bites incessantly, draws blood unfailingly; living off a lush grapevine of narratives passed surreptitiously at gatherings. Until the voices grew louder to the point of paralysis: a boycott of wants, needs, cravings—all sacrifice, maybe rebellion—aimed squarely at the corrupt and wealthy. We practiced and won on civil disobedience 35 years ago, a citizenry discovering its collective power.

Is what we know of carrying a torch. For revolutions that we fashion ourselves. Bright enough to overthrow a dictator, or unseat a President, or take back our freedoms. (more…)

I started 2021 with such hope in the possibility of gathering together the politicized generations X, millennial, and Z towards affecting 2022 election outcomes. I sent out documents, talked to people, revised the documents, talked to even more people and groups, and kept that hope going. The vision, many agreed, was wonderful. We want to talk platforms not personalities; we want to champion the issues that we think are important for 2022, list the demands that we want candidates to talk about and take a stand on, if they want our vote.

I had hoped that if the Filipinos in their 40s, (Generation X, the Martial Law generation) and younger (millennials, gen Z) could organize themselves into the monolith that they are, proven as that is by the fact of our having risen to the occasion of the most vulnerable during the lockdowns last year, then all other generations (hey boomers!), and sectors (business sector, NGOs and CSOs, the Church, the schools) would have no choice but to listen, and join in.

I had thought that this was the perfect time, when so many of us in the middle have been politicized by the past pandemic year, and when it is clear that we have much to unite on not just among ourselves but especially and more importantly, with the masses. We have all suffered in this pandemic and under this governance. There is no reason to imagine we cannot unite on that.

(more…)

To say that this year’s Independence Day was the most difficult one to experience would be an understatement. That it was riddled with friends from across the political spectrum sending me messages asking about what the hell is going on, where are we going, what are we doing—asked with equal parts dismay and disgust—is as one expects if you have friends like mine who are not delusional about 2022.

And I do think that there are many many of us who can see what is wrong with what is currently happening on our side of the fence, just as there are many of us who can tell that so far what it’s looking like is that we’re going to repeat the mistakes of 2016 and 2019, where elitism, blindness, divisiveness on our side played a huge part in losing the elections to Duterte and his people.

But 2022 can only be worse. Because we now know that this divide is a huge gaping hole when we consider how it disenfranchises the majority of voters who will—as surveys show—go for other candidates.

We all know by now that we are doomed to repeat things we do not learn from. (more…)