"THE REVOLUTION failed
because it was badly directed, because its leader won his post not with
praiseworthy but with blameworthy
acts, because instead of employing the most useful men of the nation he
jealously discarded them. Believing that the advance of the people was no more
than his own personal advance, he did not rate men according to their ability,
character and patriotism but according to the degree of friendship or kinship
binding him to them; and wanting to have favorites willing to sacrifice
themselves for him, he showed himself lenient to their faults. Because he
disdained the people, he could not but fall like an idol of wax melting in the
heat of adversity. May we never forget such a terrible lesson learned at the
cost of unspeakable sufferings!"
Apolinario Mabini’s
reflection on Emilio Aguinaldo referenced from Mabini, A. (1935). The Philippine Revolution. Manila: National Library
of the Philippines.
The tremor that was Heneral Luna continues to send strong
aftershocks, unearthing not only
inconvenient but even damning truths long buried by those who hijacked history
to ransom their tarnished image, to disinfect their blood-splattered likeness.
To subvert, aye, to debase, history to personal hagiography.
Aftershocks from the
Filipino past – like this the Sublime Paralytic’s take on El Presidente – shaking the very foundations of his PNoy present.
As it is, Mabini here
already makes a perfectly prescient statement on the current BS Aquino dispensation.
Its paraphrase, with but the slightest substitutions, takes it to an
in-your-face, if pedestrian, relevance. Thus:
"The Daang Matuwid failed because it was
badly directed, because its leader won his post not with praiseworthy deeds by
himself but out of emotions rising from the death of his sainted mother, because
instead of employing the most useful men of the nation he vented his vengeful
rage against them, associated as they were with the predecessor he abominated. Believing
that the advance of the people is subservient to his own personal advance, he
did not rate men according to their ability, character and patriotism but
according to the degree of friendship, read: kaklase and kabarilan, or
kinship, read: kamag-anak, binding
him to them; and wanting to have favorites willing to sacrifice themselves for
him, read: Purisima, Abaya, Alcala and Torres, he showed himself lenient to
their faults. Because he actually disdained those whom he flatteringly called
his “boss,” he could not but fall like an idol of wax melting in the heat of
adversity. May we never forget such a terrible lesson learned at the cost of
unspeakable sufferings!"
Indeed, the horrific
lessons of the Luneta massacre of Hong Kong tourists, Supertyphoon Yolanda and
Mamasapano, of PDAF and DAP, of Customs’ preferential treatment of big-time
smugglers and harassment of OFWs, of the daily Calvary that is the MRT, and the
hourly hell that is EDSA. To cite only the top-of-mind issues of misgovernance,
of misfeasance, if not malfeasance.
Speaking of Aguinaldo over
a century ago, Mabini verily defined the BS, Aquino. In real time.
There’s one more affirmation
of that truism, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Of that obscure Irish
saying denying the present and the future, attesting only to the past happening
over and over, again and again.
Of the continuing
applicability of Santayana’s caveat of doom to those who do not learn from the
lessons of history.
Of the infallibility of
that Marxist maxim of history repeating itself: first as tragedy, second as
farce.
Reading Mabini after
reliving Luna, albeit so shortly and cinematically, it makes total sense why we
are a nation doomed, why we are a people damned.
So what?
As long as we are the
nation of AlDub.