ARTIST Lea Salonga was bashed by Twitter fans for her comment on June 12, Independence Day: “Our country is not yet debt-free, poverty-free, crime-free, or corruption-free. So what are we free from exactly and why do we celebrate it?” (@MsLeaSalonga)
Some fans have called her names. Some actually made sense in saying: “Our celebration is about being free from colonizers, not being free from major maladies in our country.” (@kentaryll)
Technically speaking, June 12, 1898, was when the revolutionaries declared freedom of the Philippines. This freedom, however, was not recognized by other countries. We were sold to the Americans and endured a Japanese occupation after that. Our current identity as a sovereign nation state was given to us by Americans on July 4, 1946. We have only been celebrating June 12 as Independence Day since 1964 when President Diosdado Macapagal declared it as such through Republic Act 4166. Agreed, it is somewhat undramatic and anticlimactic. However, as Salonga points out, even this freedom is not complete.
What about our liberation from neo-colonists and the social cancer we have been living in? For starters, our culture is steeped in colonial mentality. Here I am, writing in English about our independence when, culturally, we are mere subjects of the US. Our fashion, our food and even our constitution comes from the American way of life.
What is additionally ironic is Salonga’s glory comes from the validation of acclaim she has reached in the US. If we did not venerate the American way of life, who would care if she got into the biggest broadway shows and productions of the West?
We can call ourselves a country but our sovereignty is being trespassed by the US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). A sovereign nation deals with other nations in barter or trade agreements but we have given our airspace, a right to military camps in our nation and other supposedly territorially exclusive rights of our people to a big bully who has taken such right with nary a whimper from us.
Claims that we have to keep the VFA to protect ourselves from China and other Spratly claimants is considered a lesser evil to defending it ourselves. Have we then given in to another colonizer within our midst?
Likewise, there are repressive economic strains put on the Philippines. Though we are independent to deal with social problems, we are subjugated to international agreements that keep our trade skewed. Subjugation by the sword is passe as we are held by the iron chains of bad economic policies.
Maybe Salonga was simply noticing the irony of us celebrating independence when we still witness the destitution of our poor. How can we celebrate when some of our compatriots have nothing to eat and no job to be had?
When we have stood for what is right, when we have said no to the temptations of luxury and ease, when we have held our hands to our poor, weak and disenfranchised, and together as a nation, seen with our own eyes the death of corruption and the rise of a people living in dignity, then and only then will we be free and independent.
Gregorio del Pilar, Andres Bonifacio and Diego and Gabriela Silang didn’t fight for an idea or a cause: they fought for nameless faces and many thousands who could not fight for themselves. We are in need of heroes. More correctly, we need the hero to be you.