6
OPINION
Dec. 12 - 17, 2016
Vanguard
Samar breeze
By Eric Aseo
Year-end reflections
on a dev’t project
S
Editorial
H
Resurging millennials
ours after the high
and mighty told us
that he is supporting the cops who
stifled Espinosa into perpetual silence, people reacted
the way reasonable people
do: outraged. Who would not
be, unless you were a Digong
fanatic. Cops led by someone who was already identified to be a drug coddler had
murdered unarmed suspects
inside a government facility
and then are openly supported
by the president himself, regardless of the findings of the
National Bureau of Investigation. Never in the history of
this country has this occurred.
People are now afraid
of the consequences of that
statement. By inference, the
police are now authorized to
kill suspects with impunity,
one that is protected by the
highest authority. They can
get anywhere – inside urban
poor communities with their
Oplan Tokhang, inside jails
with or without search warrants, inside private homes
- and their deeds, no matter
how illegal, will be exonerated, their sins absolved by
the high and mighty. It looks
like we are moving into some
form of dictatorship, one that
follows the likes of Hitler
himself with his black shirts
and Gestapo. The dictator
Marcos, his own idol, has
now been surpassed in the
number of murders committed during the same span of
time. In the five months of his
rule, there have been 4,000 to
5,000 dead. Unsolved, almost
forgotten, sanctioned.
Senator Trillanes is saying that is an impeachable
offense. But will the impeachment process be viable
considering his near-absolute control of both Houses of
Congress? That leaves us no
choice but the streets. Since
the ouster of the dictator
Marcos, that has been the effective venue for the toppling
down of dictators and wouldbe dictators. History will bear
us on this. The signs are positive. After years of doldrums
and apathy, millennials have
taken to the streets on the
issue of Marcos’ burial. It is
strangely reminiscent of the
late ‘60s when students went
out to the streets protesting
against the US involvement
in the Vietnam War, that
later progressed into a movement against the Marcos dictatorship. Here we are seeing
an encouraging parallelism.
While there are a few politicians who might be willing
to take sides with the resurging movement, the majority of
them have shown their true
colors right after the elections. Their balimbing character has resulted in the sudden bloating in the numbers
of the PDP Laban and the
subsequent deflation of the
Liberal Party, that could not
even be considered the minority bloc in the lower house.
Philippine political parties,
without exception, have been
guilty of political opportunism ever since the Americans
introduced the practice in the
early 1900s. Their standpoint
on major definitive issues
have been shifting with the
tides. As a whole, politicians
cannot be trusted.
The baby boomers who
started the movement in
the early ‘70s are now aging grandpas and grandmas
who can barely walk the distance from Quezon Rotunda
to Plaza Miranda, let alone
to Luneta Grandstand. But
with the resurgent millennials carrying those offbeat slogans, who knows, the oldies
might have that second wind,
that last sigaw ng bayan before they finally call it quits.#
The Weekly Vanguard
is the Eastern Visayas weekly newspaper published by The Vanguard
Communications and Publishing Corporation, with its main office
at Brgy. 95, Diversion Road, Caibaan, Tacloban City.
Publisher:
Bong Contapay
Business Manager:
Rey Enales
Editor:
Emil B. Justimbaste
Associate Editor:
Elmer V. Recuerdo
Columnists:
Prof. Rolando Borrinaga, Phillip Ting