Mabini on PNoy

"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.