Amelia HC Ylagan

… When Amb. Kim made his speech for the turnover of the bells, he made no apologies, no explanations for the confiscation of the bells by the US. He simply said, “In World War II and in Korea, our soldiers fought, bled, died, and sacrificed side by side. Together they made possible the peace and prosperity we enjoy today… Our relationship has withstood the tests of history and flourishes today. And every day our relationship is further strengthened by our unbreakable alliance, robust economic partnership, and deep people-to-people ties” (usembassy.gov, Dec 11, 2018).

Somehow, Amb. Kim’s careful diplomatic allusions to “our relationship” cannot but call back Pres. Duterte’s oft-repeated open disdain for the US (specially for past US President Barack Obama and for immediate-past Ambassador Philip Goldberg). Duterte’s rejection has progressively been made more painful to the US, juxtaposed to his open and gushy declaration of love for Chinese President Xi Jinping and all things Chinese. In the current heightened US-China global trade and political war, the suddenly rushed return of the Balangiga bells might plaintively ring: but we two — the Philippines and the US — we are friends, are we not?

… And insistently, triumphantly, the bells will toll again at Balangiga. But for whom, and for what will the bells toll?

The once-silenced Balangiga bells must peal and boom even more urgently now than in the chilling wars of betrayal and treachery for dominance and power in the early 1900s. The jubilation for national pride redeemed by the return of the symbolic bells is confused by the sickening feeling in the pit that the horned specter of dominance and greed still hovers, in the appearance of the Filipino’s own skin and mien. For colonization and dominance, and its treachery and betrayals can also be by our own leaders.

So many issues in our country that overwhelm us at yearend: is there really democracy guided by the rule of law, in the insuppressible and persistent “rumors” of extrajudicial killings and transgressions of human rights, protested and called down locally and by foreign observers?

Have we not observed and experienced first-hand how the constitution and the laws have been turned upside down in shockingly unorthodox little-known legal trickeries like the quo warranto to remove a Chief Justice; and the revocation of amnesty granted to one particular ex-putschist senator and present critic of the administration? Why are other politicians accused of plunder and other high crimes pardoned? What about the fate of another senator languishing in jail for alleged drug involvement? And are we not chilled by the continuous extension of martial law in Mindanao, justified by an Armed Forces who should have been doing its job as it is supposed to be competently doing?

Are we not aghast and terrified at the blatant dishonesty and corruption that are dismissed lightly for “friends” of those in power versus the persecution by evidently trumped-up charges for the vulnerable non-friends or those “unfriended” for lost utility? And we are overwhelmed in anxiety for a 2019 budget not yet approved, discovering in painful bits and pieces the self-serving “insertions” and allocations of “savings” in hidden pork barrel that was already deemed unconstitutional in the previous administration. Players in the controlling “team” seem to be fighting each other in sibling rivalry for opportunistic control of the resources of government — nay, the resources of the people.

But the unkindest cut of all by the “new colonizers” that we may call those who want to perpetuate themselves in economic and political power, is rushing the charter change for federalism to be transfused into our life veins. We will not be a free people anymore if the Hadean concepts are installed and institutionalized of unlimited terms for government positions, allowed political dynasties forever, and the divide-and-rule over federal regions controlled by a president practically for life, with a convenient vice-president of the president’s own party and personal subservience — among other self-serving and opportunistic insurances of control and impunity by those already in power.

The Balangiga bells must toll for freedom and democracy in the Philippines.