Anywhere will do December 13, 2006
I DON’T know if it’s completely by coincidence that the government gaming firm Pagcor has rented the Quirino Grandstand on the very day that the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) was to lead its flock there for a prayer rally, which was this Friday. But my first reaction to that was: no matter. So what if they got Rizal Park? All they’ll succeed in doing is add another insult to Jose Rizal, the one person Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in particular likes to invoke -- after God -- to justify clinging to power. It should help to remind us what she did to him four years ago on his death anniversary.
Rizal in any case, like God, has been known to express himself through the people, and send retribution to tyrants through them. Vox populi, vox Dei; vox populi, vox Josei. The voice of the people is the voice of God, the voice of the people is the voice of Rizal. Certainly, neither God nor Rizal has been known to speak through Pagcor or Arroyo or Speaker Joe de Venecia. Whose voice passes through them, well, feel free to speculate on the source.
That was before the CBCP decided to postpone its prayer rally to Sunday to still get the Rizal Park. Well, I am glad at least that CBCP head Archbishop Angel Lagdameo will push through with it notwithstanding Arroyo’s order for Joe de V to drop Con-ass. We have every reason to distrust these people. “We cannot let our guard down, we cannot trust them,” Msgr. Meliton Oso, executive director of Jaro Archdiocese social action center, expressly said. I’d have thought though that Friday would have been the better day, even for prayer. I can only hope the faithful would prove true to their faith this Sunday and stay away from the malls and the cockpits to show their solidarity with their shepherd.
Frankly, I don’t know that the Edsa Shrine wouldn’t have been a better venue. It has a more storied past, one at least that the current generation still remembers. I did think initially that Pagcor did the bishops an unwitting favor by driving them away from the Rizal Park straight into the arms of Edsa highway. Plaza Miranda and the Mendiola Bridge would also have been good venues, but much of their symbolic value would probably have been lost on today’s generation. Which I deeply rue: Plaza Miranda no longer stokes fires of pride or sends shivers of awe, but it used to be the very embodiment of freedom in this country. As every public figure said then, a law was not a law until it could be defended at Plaza Miranda. A point Joe de V and his minions badly need learning.
But the Edsa Shrine seemed much the better choice because, like I said, it holds tremendous symbolic value for the present generation. Who knows? Maybe a richly ironic value as well -- the site that spawned the current tyranny being potentially the same site that could end it. Or spark the beginning of its end. I don’t know that the CBCP or any other group would have needed a permit to gather there. Why would they? Joe de V and company themselves did not ask for a permit from the Constitution, or the source of the Constitution, the one thing that animates it -- the people -- to perform sodomy upon Inang Bayan [Mother Land]. What else call "Con-ass" [constituent assembly] but that? At the very most, it’s time we showed that we do not exist at their sufferance, they exist at ours. It’s time we stopped suffering from them. It’s time we stopped suffering them.
The statement by Kawal and likeminded groups that they would be there to protect the marchers from harm comes as no small reassurance.
But no matter, too: The place is not deathly important, the purpose is. I can only hope that the people who will go to the prayer rally this Sunday will go there to pray in the truest sense of the word. Which is to beg God not to do what one ought to do himself, but to beg God to give one the courage to do what one ought to do. In any case, God has been known to help only those who help themselves. Indeed, I can only hope that the people who go there to pray -- which will most certainly include me -- will go past praying Charter change to hell but give hell to the evil that makes abuses like the "Cha-cha" possible.
I said it yesterday: I can’t understand why we should content ourselves with being at the receiving end of every iniquity or abuse this government, in whole or in part, foists upon us. The last time we congregated at Edsa highway, we ousted a government that had merely ceased to earn our trust. The current one hasn’t just betrayed our trust, it never had it to begin with.
I don’t know why De Venecia et al. should be free to make demands upon us when we should be the ones making demands upon them. At the very least, I don’t know why we shouldn’t demand that the May elections be turned from a senatorial to a presidential one. We already have a Constitution, we still do not have a president. The Constitution is genuine, the president is fake. Change the president, not the Constitution.
Turning next year’s elections into snap presidential elections, not quite incidentally, is the only thing that will guarantee those elections will be clean. Which is the next problem we will be having after we thwart De Venecia from taking Malacañang by the rear -- talk of Con-ass! Arroyo’s example of imposing her will on this country by force has already been followed by De Venecia and company. What’s to prevent the administration candidates from following her example about stealing the vote? You do not punish crime, crime will flourish. You do not punish crime, crime will be emulated.
The place doesn’t really matter, the purpose does. If I recall my catechism right, Jesus Christ once told his apostles: “Whenever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”
The Fellow Downstairs didn’t exactly say the same thing. But look at the tongressmen and their allies in the Palace, and see if he might not as well have said so.
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=37919
Rizal in any case, like God, has been known to express himself through the people, and send retribution to tyrants through them. Vox populi, vox Dei; vox populi, vox Josei. The voice of the people is the voice of God, the voice of the people is the voice of Rizal. Certainly, neither God nor Rizal has been known to speak through Pagcor or Arroyo or Speaker Joe de Venecia. Whose voice passes through them, well, feel free to speculate on the source.
That was before the CBCP decided to postpone its prayer rally to Sunday to still get the Rizal Park. Well, I am glad at least that CBCP head Archbishop Angel Lagdameo will push through with it notwithstanding Arroyo’s order for Joe de V to drop Con-ass. We have every reason to distrust these people. “We cannot let our guard down, we cannot trust them,” Msgr. Meliton Oso, executive director of Jaro Archdiocese social action center, expressly said. I’d have thought though that Friday would have been the better day, even for prayer. I can only hope the faithful would prove true to their faith this Sunday and stay away from the malls and the cockpits to show their solidarity with their shepherd.
Frankly, I don’t know that the Edsa Shrine wouldn’t have been a better venue. It has a more storied past, one at least that the current generation still remembers. I did think initially that Pagcor did the bishops an unwitting favor by driving them away from the Rizal Park straight into the arms of Edsa highway. Plaza Miranda and the Mendiola Bridge would also have been good venues, but much of their symbolic value would probably have been lost on today’s generation. Which I deeply rue: Plaza Miranda no longer stokes fires of pride or sends shivers of awe, but it used to be the very embodiment of freedom in this country. As every public figure said then, a law was not a law until it could be defended at Plaza Miranda. A point Joe de V and his minions badly need learning.
But the Edsa Shrine seemed much the better choice because, like I said, it holds tremendous symbolic value for the present generation. Who knows? Maybe a richly ironic value as well -- the site that spawned the current tyranny being potentially the same site that could end it. Or spark the beginning of its end. I don’t know that the CBCP or any other group would have needed a permit to gather there. Why would they? Joe de V and company themselves did not ask for a permit from the Constitution, or the source of the Constitution, the one thing that animates it -- the people -- to perform sodomy upon Inang Bayan [Mother Land]. What else call "Con-ass" [constituent assembly] but that? At the very most, it’s time we showed that we do not exist at their sufferance, they exist at ours. It’s time we stopped suffering from them. It’s time we stopped suffering them.
The statement by Kawal and likeminded groups that they would be there to protect the marchers from harm comes as no small reassurance.
But no matter, too: The place is not deathly important, the purpose is. I can only hope that the people who will go to the prayer rally this Sunday will go there to pray in the truest sense of the word. Which is to beg God not to do what one ought to do himself, but to beg God to give one the courage to do what one ought to do. In any case, God has been known to help only those who help themselves. Indeed, I can only hope that the people who go there to pray -- which will most certainly include me -- will go past praying Charter change to hell but give hell to the evil that makes abuses like the "Cha-cha" possible.
I said it yesterday: I can’t understand why we should content ourselves with being at the receiving end of every iniquity or abuse this government, in whole or in part, foists upon us. The last time we congregated at Edsa highway, we ousted a government that had merely ceased to earn our trust. The current one hasn’t just betrayed our trust, it never had it to begin with.
I don’t know why De Venecia et al. should be free to make demands upon us when we should be the ones making demands upon them. At the very least, I don’t know why we shouldn’t demand that the May elections be turned from a senatorial to a presidential one. We already have a Constitution, we still do not have a president. The Constitution is genuine, the president is fake. Change the president, not the Constitution.
Turning next year’s elections into snap presidential elections, not quite incidentally, is the only thing that will guarantee those elections will be clean. Which is the next problem we will be having after we thwart De Venecia from taking Malacañang by the rear -- talk of Con-ass! Arroyo’s example of imposing her will on this country by force has already been followed by De Venecia and company. What’s to prevent the administration candidates from following her example about stealing the vote? You do not punish crime, crime will flourish. You do not punish crime, crime will be emulated.
The place doesn’t really matter, the purpose does. If I recall my catechism right, Jesus Christ once told his apostles: “Whenever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”
The Fellow Downstairs didn’t exactly say the same thing. But look at the tongressmen and their allies in the Palace, and see if he might not as well have said so.
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=37919
posted by dqfan06 @ 6:47 AM
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