Navalny, Ninoy, and opposition leadership

You don’t give up after an election loss, [abandon] national [politics] as if the world stopped. It can’t be that way, since [national] problems are still there,” former senator Antonio Trillanes IV told me during our podcast conversation.

Philippine politics in the past two years has been practically dominated by the brewing conflict between competing factions within the ruling coalition. This was not inevitable. Top opposition leaders who competed for the highest offices in the 2022 elections largely retreated into “private life” or re-embraced the civil society realm.

Several other opposition figures, meanwhile, found succor in travel vlogging. This left progressive leaders such as Risa Hontiveros as the lone voice of political conscience in the upper chamber, while the few remaining progressive legislators such as France Castro carried the torch in the House of Representatives.

As for the million-strong “pink movement,” was there any concerted effort to organize and mobilize the immeasurable enthusiasm for positive change beyond the 2022 elections? With no enemies on the battlefield, the “UniTeam” legion began devouring itself. But as Trillanes correctly pointed out in our conversation, only fools would assume that the best strategy for the genuine opposition is to have its “popcorn” party.

As I have repeatedly warned throughout recent months, including in a penultimate interview with Pia Hontiveros of CNN Philippines a month ago, there is a good chance that the genuine opposition might find itself totally “boxed out” should it not sincerely learn the right lessons from its past defeats in preparation for future elections.

Yes, I’m fully aware of the amount of resentment some opposition figures may be holding against me. Not to mention the torrent of calumny and spite displayed by self-styled opposition influencers, who have repeatedly tried to dismiss and denigrate any objective analysis of our current state of political affairs. Isolation is perhaps the price one pays for embracing the burden of responsibility.

What folks must understand is this: the reason I was never “soft” on our opposition leaders is largely because of the example set by courageous freedom fighters in infinitely more inhospitable political landscapes. For all the evils of the Duterte era—or the initial fears over the Marcos Jr. presidency—our political challenges are nothing like what countless women, youth, and activists have faced in totalitarian states in other corners of the world.

Alexei Navalny, who recently died under suspicious circumstances while incarcerated in a penal colony, was the ultimate opposition “leader.” He never gave up even after losing presidential bids. And he never abandoned the field even after multiple attempts on his life.

“I don’t want to give up either my country or my beliefs,” he wrote last month, referring to his shocking decision to return to Russia after narrowly surviving an assassination attempt. “I cannot betray either the first or the second.” To be clear, he had his share of flaws, most notably his revanchist statements on the Russian occupation of Crimea.

But Navalny is nothing short of a political martyr, whose inimitable legacy will outlive Russian tyrants and echo across ages. “You’re not allowed to give up,” he argued in an award-winning documentary on his life and struggle. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive,” he counseled his supporters in anticipation of his demise at the hands of a ruthless, nihilist regime.

Navalny’s heroic return—and his full re-embrace of the Christian spirit in his twilight years—is eerily familiar to us Filipinos. Didn’t our own Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino II also risk it all for his country, returning to his homeland even if it meant almost certain death?

Perhaps, the widowed Yulia Navalnaya—the stoic hero behind Navalny’s courageous journey—will one day lead a popular revolution just as Cory did years after her husband’s assassination. For now, ours is no longer a struggle against a dictatorship, thanks to Ninoy’s sacrifice, but instead against authoritarian nostalgia and democratic hollowing.

“I’m already convincing members of the Pink Movement to start promoting Risa Hontiveros as the new leader [because] she never gave up … [she] is doing the right things that a ‘leader’ of the opposition should do,” Trillanes told me. He seems to have found the right opposition leader for the country.

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