Not repudiation, but validation

There is a familiar lament that can be heard among Filipinos who endured and struggled against the Marcos dictatorship every 21st of August, especially in recent years.

There can also be observed the familiar hand-wringing among many who have come to despair at the state of the country since we won back our freedom from tyranny.

Aug. 21 (just like the Feb. 24 anniversary of the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution) is when it becomes fashionable to wonder out loud whether the Philippines, through the sometimes confounding political choices of its voters, had repudiated everything that the martyred Ninoy Aquino had lived and died for.

To be sure, it is tempting to throw up one’s hands in frustration and concede that the fight for a better nation—one where good governance is the standard, where public corruption is not the norm, and where socioeconomic structures allow honest and hardworking citizens can improve their lives—has been lost.

Certainly, there is no shortage of indicators, both qualitative and quantitative, to support the assertion that the gains that were won with great difficulty since the assassination of Aquino on this day exactly four decades ago were either illusory or have been squandered by those entrusted with preserving them (meaning “everyone”).

A cursory survey of the Philippine landscape is all that’s needed to drive one to despondency. The so-called brain drain of highly skilled Filipinos, which had been stanched in the 1990s and 2000s, has resumed. Everywhere one looks, the country’s engineers and information technology professionals are migrating to avail themselves of better lives. Nowhere is this sad phenomenon more visible than in the health care sector where nurses are fleeing the country by the thousands, attracted to wealthy nations who not only proclaim that their services are valued, but also put their money where their mouth is by actually paying them substantially more.

Corruption in government has returned with a vengeance from the national to the local levels, with the COVID-19 pandemic providing a convenient excuse, especially during the previous administration, for abusing and disregarding state procurement protocols.

More alarmingly, the country’s recovery from the economic ravages of the public health crisis has been uneven and is now starting to look more fragile in the context of broader uncertainties in the global environment. This fragility is worrisome because sustained strong growth is critical for the Philippines to be able to pay off the staggering amounts of debt that the previous administration had accumulated.

To top it all off, the 2016 election of Rodrigo Duterte as the country’s chief executive was followed six years later by the election of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — the son and namesake of the president that Aquino had fought against.

After contemplating the current lay of the land, one could be forgiven for concluding that fighting the proverbial good fight since that fateful day on the airport tarmac 40 years ago has been for naught.

But that conclusion is wrong.

Everything that has happened since Filipinos reawakened on Aug. 21, 1983 — especially the unpleasant and unfavorable events since then that made it look like the country was backsliding — was not a repudiation of the freedom purchased by Aquino’s ultimate sacrifice … but a validation of it.

We are where we are today, for better or worse, not because Aquino’s vision failed, but because his vision succeeded.

The undying gift that was unwrapped by his death was the unshackling of our country’s collective hands and feet from a future predetermined by the whims of a dictator or a ruling elite, and the freedom to tread whatever path we choose—freedom for us, even if it meant electing an inexperienced president in 2010 who sometimes looked like he lacked empathy for the common people; even if it meant choosing a president in 2016 who vowed to unleash a brutal drug war which he predicted would claim 50,000 lives; or electing as chief executive someone who remains steadfastly unapologetic about the abuses committed during his father’s 20-year regime.

Ninoy Aquino did not save this country. We did that ourselves three years after his murder, having been inspired by his life and death.

The road illuminated by his bravery and sacrifice did not lead the Philippines to its current state where the gains of the post-Edsa years seem to have evaporated into thin air. We undid those gains ourselves.

This is the very same gift that Filipinos of all walks of life and all political persuasions can continue using to move the country forward and shape it into whatever form we desire. Good or bad, our fate is in our hands.