Post-election Reflection through El Filibusterismo 

Now that the election is over, and we have seen the unofficial results for the President and Vice President based on the 100% transmission of COMELEC, it is now safe to say that we have two indisputable winners–Rodrigo Duterte and Leni Robredo respectively. As Howie Severino said, it was indeed the “revenge of the peripheries,” as both leaders were propelled into their positions by voters from Visayas and Mindanao, and not from “Imperial Manila.” Duterte hails from Davao and Robredo from Bicol. Duterte’s election is also historic. He is the first Mindanaoan to be elected into the Philippine presidency, the highest office in the land, breaking what political analysts say as the “Mindanao curse.”

In the elections, despite rumors of violent revolutions and cheating, the automated election results have been quick, and in one day’s time we roughly have results. I applaud the volunteers who made sure that the people’s sentiment is reflected in the ballots. The People have chosen, and in a democracy, while I didn’t vote for the president-elect, I fully respect the choice and give my full support to the incoming administration.

With that said, I would like to make this space a pouring-your-heart-out space. Please bear with me. 

This particular election has been divisive and hurtful. Words were said that were meant to destroy. While I admire the passion of people for their candidates, and the belief that the people have a stake in the country’s next 6 years, I would like to address what has become a crude discourse on social media, fuelled by anti-intellectualism (epitomized by phrases to dismiss facts like, “Eh di wow, ikaw na madaming alam,” “bobotante” or “__tards”) and a proliferation of misinformation thanks to memes that were meant to insinuate and not to tell the whole truth. What should have been a level-headed discussion of issues proposed by candidates have in effect been a discourse on bashing women, insulting minorities, and going so low as to wish people harm.

This I think was fuelled not only by the political camps’ mudslinging and wanton exaggerations, but also by the people’s willingness to be run over by a truck–to overhaul the system, be that as it may, and have a quick solution to age-old problems, no matter if the cost it entails is our Freedom. There seem to be a wide consensus among us that a strongman (a dictator) is needed, to threaten us, so that we would be “disciplined.” Such an extreme move is logical if only we have become as desperate as war-torn countries like Syria. We are not.

The lies perpetrated is hard to sift from truth, and with emotions running high, it clouded the judgment of many. I am saddened by this.

This have only made the challenge of the country more daunting as the Duterte administration would govern a now polarized and divided nation, thanks to the conduct of all parties and their supporters during the campaign period.

If you are my friend on twitter or on facebook, you know my stand on issues with Duterte and my disagreements with him on national and foreign policy. I won’t reiterate them here because that is no longer relevant. The people have chosen him. What is relevant is, what happens now, after the dust have settled? We have a winner, and I think right now clarity is what we need. There is a need to repair or patch up what I see as a great damage to our political public square. I call it damage because I don’t think we can ever go back to an election campaign that, with all its faults and failings, still remained civil. Facts are called biased, and lies are accepted uncritically as truth. Civility is hard to find these days.

Let me invite you to open the pages of Jose Rizal’s El Filibusterismo. I have often said that Rizal’s insights were beyond his time, and even now in this election, his insights shine through, and exposes the flaws of our people. In the novel, we are introduced to Simoun, a character in disguise, one who was actually Crisostomo Ibarra from the previous novel. Simoun is no longer idealistic like Ibarra. Fueled by rage to those who have wronged him and rendered him unjustly, Simoun, like us, also wanted to overhaul the system. He planned it to the letter. All the corrupt friars, the tenientes, the social climbers, the corrupt local officials would be inside one house, where he planted a bomb. It would explode, eliminating all of them, and in his delight, it would exact his perfect revenge. He told himself he was doing this for his country. But Rizal as author, using deus ex machina, foils this attempt. Wounded and on the run, Simoun runs to Padre Florentino, a meek and righteous priest. He pleads with the priest to let him tell his secret, his last will, before he dies. Their exchange is what needs to be understood by all of us. 

In the end, Simoun providentially failed. But the end of the story turns us to that hope of a new discerning generation that would rise, who would wash away our shame and invigorate us. Reading this would always bring me to tears.

Excerpt from “The Last Chapter” in El Filibusterismo, translated by Leon Ma. Guerrero:

The confession was long and wearisome but the priest no longer gave a sign of being shocked during its course and seldom interrupted Simoun… The voice of the priest, sad, deliberate, but consoling, broke the silence.

“God will forgive you, Mr. Simoun,” he said. “He knows we are liable to be deceived. He has seen what you have suffered and, in allowing you to be punished for your crimes by suffering death at the hands of the very men you instigated, we can see His infinite mercy. He has frustrated your plans, one after the other, even the best… Let us obey His will and give Him thanks.”

“In your opinion,” Simoun replied in a faltering voice, “it would be His will that these islands…”

“Should continue in their miserable condition?” the priest finished the question when he saw that Simoun hesitated. “Sir, I do not know, I cannot read the mind of the Inscrutable. But I know that He has not forsaken those peoples that in times of decision have placed themselves in His hands and made Him the Judge of their oppression… God is justice and He cannot abandon His own cause, the cause of freedom without which no justice is possible.”

“Why then has He forsaken me?”

“Because you chose a means of which He could not approve. The glory of saving a country cannot be given to one who has contributed to its ruin. You believed that what crime and iniquity had stained and deformed, more crime and more iniquity could cleanse and redeem. This was error. Hate only creates monsters; crime, criminals; only love can work wonders, only virtue can redeem. If our country is some day to be free, it will not be through vice and crime, it will not be through the corruption of its sons, some deceived, others bribed; redemption presupposes virtue; virtue, sacrifice, and sacrifice, love!”

“Very well, I accept your explanation,” replied Simoun after a pause. “I was wrong. But because I was wrong, was this God of yours to deny freedom to a whole people and spare others much more evil than I was? What is my error compared with the crimes of those who govern us? Why should this God of yours give more importance to my iniquities than to the cries of the innocent? Why did He not strike me down and then work the people’s victory? Why allow so many who are worthy and just to suffer and, without lifting a finger, find satisfaction in their suffering?”

“The just and the worthy must suffer so that their ideas may be known and spread. The vessel must be shaken or broken to release the perfume, the stone must be struck to raise a spark. There is something providential in the persecution of tyrants, Mr. Simoun.”

“I knew that. That is why I encouraged tyranny…”

“Yes, my friend, but It was filth that spread more than anything else. You fomented social corruption without sowing a single idea…. Of course, the vices of a government are fatal to it and kill it, but they also kill the society in which they are bred. An immoral government is matched by a demoralized people; an administration without conscience, by greedy and servile townsmen and outlaws and robbers in the mountains. The slave is the image of his master; the country, of its government.”

There was a brief pause.

“Then what is to be done?” asked Simoun.

“Endure and work.”

“Endure, work!” replied Simoun sarcastically. “It is easy to say so when there is nothing to be endured, when work is rewarded… Persuade these people that they are murdered for their own salvation, that they work for the prosperity of their homes. Endure, suffer–what kind of God is that?”

“A most just God, Mr. Simoun,” replied the priest, “a God who punishes our lack of faith, our vices, the little regard we have for dignity and civic virtues. We tolerate vice and thereby become accomplices in it, sometimes we have to go so far as to applaud it; it is only just, then, very just, that we should suffer the consequences that our children should do the same. He is the God of freedom, Mr. Simoun, who makes us love it by weighting the yoke upon our shoulders… The school of suffering tempers the spirit, the fighting arena strengthens the soul. I do not mean to say that our freedom must be won at the point of a sword; the sword now counts for very little in the destinies of the times; but I do say that we must win our freedom by deserving it, by improving the mind and enhancing the dignity of the individual, loving what is just, what is good, what is great, to the point of dying for it. When a people reach these heights, God provides the weapon, and the idols and the tyrants fall like a house of cards, and freedom shines in the first dawn. Our misfortunes are our own, let us blame nobody else for them… as long as the Filipino people do not have sufficient vigour to proclaim, head held high and chest bared, their right to life of their own in human society, and to guarantee it with their sacrifices, with their very blood; as long as we see our countrymen feel privately ashamed, hearing the growl of their rebelling and protesting conscience, while in public they keep silent and even join the oppressor in mocking the oppressed; as long as we see them wrapping themselves up in their selfishness and praising with forced smiles the most despicable acts, begging with their eyes for the share of the booty, why give them independence? With or without Spain they would be the same, and perhaps, perhaps worse. What is the use of independence if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow? And no doubt they will, because whoever submits to tyranny, loves it! Mr. Simoun, as long as our people are not prepared, and enter the struggle deceived and compelled, without a clear idea of what they are to do, the best planned movements will fail and it is better that they should fail, for why give the bride to the groom if he does not love her enough and is not ready to die for her?

…Since the dying man had nothing to say, Father Florentino engrossed in his own thoughts, whispered:

“Where are the youth who will dedicate their innocence, their idealism, their enthusiasm to the good of the country? Where are they who will give generously of their blood to wash away so much shame, crime and abomination? Pure and immaculate must the victim be for the sacrifice to be acceptable. Where are you, young men and young women, who are to embody in yourselves the life-force that has been drained from our veins, the pure ideals that have grown stained in our minds, the fiery enthusiasm that has been quenched in our hearts? We await you, come for we await you!” 

He felt his eyes moisten and freed his hand, rising then and going to the window to contemplate the vast expanse of the sea.

*Art above belongs to its owner.