The morning after…

Jomar was awake before the city rooster gave its first rendition. He checked his email one last time. He did not want to miss any school work. After hanging his back pack on his shoulder, he looked at his phone, said goodbye to his mom and off he want towards the bus stop. Today, he had no plans of going to school.
While he walked towards his bus stop, his phone buzzed with a series of instant messages.
“Hey, see you at the intersection of EDSA and Main Avenue. We will walk from there”, wrote Juan, his buddy since High School.
Another phrase popped up, “Just talked to Juan. I told him all these is useless. See ya…”
The roads were clogged; today more than the usual since crowds were gradually taking over the lanes. A gathering was slowly building up in front of the gate of a military campus. There were barricades and volunteers equipped with megaphones directing people towards a center stage. At the middle of the stage was a table covered with a white linen. Hanging by a shade was a long banner: “Welcome to EDSA. Today we commemorate our people’s power”.
This was one of the snippets I browsed through the chatter of the social media, an ongoing passion embedded on the foregrounds of uncertainty, chagrined polemics, and circuitous debates, finger pointing and satirical innuendos. From an outsider’s perspective, sentiments against corruption, disgust against greed and a drastic need for change are all clear even without a 20/20 vision. What gets murky and trapped in a carousel is the prevalence of not exactly knowing what to do in a most effective manner.
Last week I wrote about the people’s desire to get rid of the pork barrel, a system that allows politicians to spend without checks or balances and without any need to provide evidence of accountability. A march was established after that to call the attention of those who seem not to do anything. And then the EDSA commemoration followed, an apparent attempt to convert a historical incident into a patriotic tradition. The culprit for financial malfeasance is now in jail. The poor still pepper the pavement with empty cans as a busy horde of petty thieves try to steal from the unemployed. Meanwhile, the elected few are tucked up in a quiet hall wherein they discuss matters many of them are ignorant about. Yet when the “pork barrel” comes in, it seems that the consensus is heightened. Votes are counted. Theft, disguised as legislation is passed.
Social media comes in the stage. The likes of Tweeter, Face book, Tumbler and Instagram all chip in with instant messages, video clips, pictures, essays and timelines of everything that is wrong with the Philippines, every crime and every corruption. The filthy politician is plundered with slander while the poor masses are portrayed as victims of their own suffrage. Everyone is at fault. Nothing seems to work. Comic relief enters as a compensatory tool to bring a smile to those who are at a loss for not completely understanding, not totally knowing, and for not thoroughly committing to any cause that is not as clear as it should be.
Jomar is a good student. Like so many students before him, many fought for a cause without a purpose, died without a worthwhile end, and desperately left their birthplace because they had no other choice. Juan will follow him, support him, and even emulate his ideals and principles. They may succeed. They may also fail. Yet in an environment where humor seems to be the only panacea against social ills, how can the reality of hope be truly established?
On the morning after EDSA I, II, or III, life went on. And the day after the million men march, life moved on. Recently, somewhere in Zamboanga City, 20 people were kept hostage by a group of renegades who used their faith as a rationale for a cause they have been fighting for. Lives were lost. Victims died. Family members and other loved ones will suffer. For those people, life stopped.
“Just talked to Juan. I told him all these is useless. See ya…” Who could this third friend be? And why does he think that what they were about to do were useless? Despite what he thought, he was still going to meet with his friends. He must be a good friend, the unnamed one, the one who will go with the flow despite his own contradictions.
When the party is over, the morning after will decide whether the hang over was worth it or whether we opted to waste time in being silly. In any movement, the matrix for determining the utility of an act would be a measurement of an aftermath. Either another event is triggered, people are educated, more movements are born or the objective was met. When participants join for the sake of joining, I wonder if that could be considered useful. I even wonder if there is truly any sense of solidarity within that act.
Back to the “pork barrel”, no one seems to talk about any inherent good or intent that it used to have or that it might still have. In the U.S., if local jurisdictions were the same as an office, a “pork barrel” would be identical to a “petty cash”. When something is needed, when there is a certain urgency to that need, and when the cost of satisfying that need is not a significant one, the “petty cash” is justified, but only in so far as it is accounted for somewhere. Likewise, there are certain time sensitive affairs that can never be me if provisions like a “pork barrel” does not exist. The justifiable need will be buried in bureaucracy and bickering. By the time any consensus is attained, the need would have died. Hence, a “pork barrel”. Tragically, some misguided political stewards of this tool have erroneously mistaken ownership for stewardship. And so, the fiasco.
Corruption as a nation is the same corruption as every individual that composes that nation. The modifier for the whole is the same modifier for its parts. This is what systemic means. And this is why it is hard to heal. But not every Filipino is corrupt. Therefore, there is no logic to believe that the Philippines is a corrupt nation. What cannot be true of each and every element, cannot be true of the entirety that comprises those elements. So if this last conclusion is true, then it would also be true that hope is feasible. And that, my friend, is what the morning after should be….
After the EDSA celebration, Jomar, Juan and Dodong all went back to class. Although they missed some lecture, they asked their classmates for notes. “Where were the three of you?” They asked. Jomar responded, “I went to the event that reminded me of my father before he left for work overseas. He told me to be patient. He told me to love the Philippines”.