Column: Child of the Sun Returning
“Maraming nanggugulo ngayon at naghahasik ng lagim sa lipunan. Gustong takutin at guluhin ang isipan ng taumbayan upang mawalan ng tiwala sa ating pamahalaan.” — Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
November 9, 2016. The sun rises over the Philippine peninsula. Like any other morning, we go to school and learn how to better serve our country through the institutions — both formal and informal — which are intended to protect the nation. Unlike any other morning, we realize that these same institutions are dead.
The sun has risen yet it frowns. Yesterday, the Supreme Court has made its decision. After two postponements, it is now official: World-renowned tyrant, thief, and Former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos may now be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
The student body, the student publications, and the administration of the PSHS-Main Campus have remained headstrong in their stance on the Marcos burial. On the week of the anniversary of the Martial Law, The Science Scholar ran a profile on a Martial Law survivor. In a flag ceremony, our school directress, Virginia Andres, reminded the community of the scholar’s responsibilities to the nation. School organizations have explicitly condemned the Marcos regime. The Social Science Unit released a position paper, detailing its stance against the Marcos burial. And our beloved students and faculty have not spared social media their impassioned opinions.
What must all of us then feel as we go on with another day of classes? As the nation celebrates a serial human rights violator, we are forced to sit in class and understand the complexities of vertebrate anatomy.
It is easy to say that our efforts have been futile. The Supreme Court has made their decision. Our President has made his decision, and members of legislation, too, have made their decision. These are the greatest authorities in the Philippines through which the Filipino spirit is realized — through which the Filipino spirit has become a joke.
Yet let me remind the school community that the greatest power still lies in the Filipino people. Our government has betrayed us, and through its decision to bury Marcos, it has desecrated democracy. Still, we are freer than we think. In regards to this issue, there is a way to realize the service-oriented, nationalistic, and humanistic education we in PSHS receive.
The swords we scholars wield in our minds could be translated into the limbs which rally against the establishments that have spit on the foundations of our country.
Stake Marcos’s effigy. Burn it. Plaster the country with anti-Marcos propaganda. Who cares if it’s not sightly? Who cares about the repercussions? Our government is dead — there is no sight nor consolation in decay. If there is any way to rid the motherland of rot, it is to set these institutions aflame and build over their ashes. Only then can we wake up to a new morning. This is service.
