EMANCIPATION

I call this period in our nation's history as deeply wanting of emancipation, of deliverance and of freedom from restraint--restraint from something that we have long been held captive of not only as a nation but also as a people in our own personal bondages. As Prof Randy David had emphasized, "this wrenching moment is brought about by perturbations that occur with increasing frequency. The pressure for change is felt at the individual and societal levels. The reluctant and terrified whistle-blower Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr. exemplifies the personal insecurity that an individual, caught in this transition, experiences as he comes face to face with the ugly side of a gangster regime. He sees how defenseless he is as he unburdens himself of the guilt of an entire system." At the level of society, citizens note the unreliability of institutions that have been instrumentalized by personal power. They realize they can no longer call upon the old unspoken norms to restrain those who wield power. But, more than this, the “rule of law” is exposed for what it is in a highly unequal society: nothing more, says the scholar Ben Anderson, than the oligarchy’s “firmest general guarantee of its property and political hegemony.” At the Senate hearing Friday, Lozada explained his decision to appear as driven by the need for him to think beyond his family, and for once to see himself as a member of a nation. Here he echoes a modernist sentiment that, more than a century ago, brought the generation of Jose Rizal to the threshold of an era of national and individual emancipation. In so doing, Lozada has become an agent of change. We salute him. (Prof. David, PDI, "Greed in a Changing Landscape") I believe that in our ardent desire to be freed from all these political and economic turmoils, we must also liberate ourselves in the process. Like Lozada, we too, should become an agent of change. We have to have that modernist sentiment of seeing things beyond ourselves, and start to re-connect our individual existence to a larger collective--as citizens of this nation. Emancipation is the cry of the times.