The highest-ranking General of the Armed Forces referred to it as a “commotion”. Senator Antonio Trillanes, erstwhile Lieutenant Senior Grade of the Philippine Navy walked out of his trial and he was joined by other officers accused of plotting to overthrow the government. They repaired to the nearby Manila Peninsula where they broadcast a statement encouraging the people to rise and depose the government.

Shortly after an armored personnel carrier rammed into the lobby of the posh hotel, Senator Trillanes gave up. The officers as well as many journalists were arrested and detained in a military stockade.

I guess this “commotion” was coming. Many are becoming restive with what is generally perceived as a rapidly deteriorating situation, with all the bribery and rampant corruption and poverty and injustice going around. To someone out of the loop, genuinely pained by the distressing conditions, there are only two pathways: take your chances, no matter how infinitesimally small in rigged elections or go to the mountains and work for the violent overthrow of the dispensation. Both ways, you should get an idea of the overwhelming feeling of powerlessness that pervades. There seems to be so little that we can do to help reform the blighted system.

It should be clear however that the pathway of violence will only aggravate matters. They hold the firepower and they possess the training and the expertise, never mind that we paid for all these weapons and we subsidized their education. The nonviolent movement is anchored upon a very practical consideration: too many innocent people are harmed in the crossfire.

We had proved that peaceful revolutionary change can occur. And I strongly agree, some things need to change soon.

From the Inquirer: “Six years after taking over the reins of office, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo candidly admitted on Monday before the urban poor of Tondo in Manila that poverty remained the greatest challenge facing her administration.

“We can’t claim that we have progressed as a nation if we can’t uplift the lives of the poor and the hungry in our society,” President Arroyo said in Filipino.

Amid her plunging approval rating, the President conceded that her vision of First World status for the country would remain an elusive dream if a huge portion of the population continued to be mired in poverty.

“We must stand by our beliefs and faith. It is our long-term goal to belong with the developed nations in 20 years,” said Arroyo, reiterating the ambitious goal she set for the country in her State of the Nation Address in July.

To do this, the President again emphasized the need to have a strong middle-class, world-class infrastructure and stable government institutions.”

She doesn’t get it. She needs to understand that it is no longer in her power to stimulate the middle class into becoming more productive, let alone for them to remain in the country. Her reign has become permanently associated with malaise and hopelessness. Government institutions will continue to be unstable for as long as she is in power. Whatever credibility she had has been lost in the series of scandals that have rocked her administration.

Right now, the urgent need is for the country to get together and conserve energy. Not too many people seem to realize that oil is twice as expensive compared to a year ago. This reality will effectively cripple the economy in a year if we don’t rein in all non-essential fuel consumption. Anyone think she can still call on the Filipinos to get behind her on this?

Rampant smuggling of rice, fertilizer, cement, vehicles, various raw materials will not abate until her cronies are all replaced. Tax collection will continue to languish because there is a general impression that the middle class is being made to bear a disproportionate share while big industries habitually get away with generous deals. Who wants to pay taxes that end up in paper sacks distributed to traditional politicians?

In other words, she needs to understand that she is finished as a leader who can bring our country together. She may have seen the promised land but she won’t be the one to take us there.

The gavel-to-gavel coverage provided for the stymied multi-billion peso broadband deal gives us a peek as to how our honorable legislators conduct business. “In aid of legislation”, they preen around like sober jurists and hotdog their legal acumen every chance they get. So much time expended towards a conclusion I will fearlessly forecast: there is widespread corruption at hand in the hallowed halls of our leaders.

There, that didn’t take but a few seconds and no money whatsoever, and as if this realization would provoke cries of Eureka!

We don’t need the World Bank to point this out to us nor do we have to wait for the latest surveys. The corruption that pervades everywhere is sickening. It is crystal clear even to the most detached pedestrian.

We do not need any more of this subterfuge of aiding legislation or any legislation for that matter. It’s not as if we follow our own laws anyway. Did we just not spend a fortune convicting a plunderer and then conveniently allow him to walk away without restitution?

We, the Filipino people have become so accustomed to abuse we hardly feel it any more. This system has succeeded in converting most us into small, selfish units that will not act so long as our most basic needs are met. And basic here refers to a portion of a packet of instant noodles, a classroom that is better described as a holding pen, a little electricity that is overpriced, grossly clear water, plus a couple of tablets of aspirin.

We are afraid of our leaders, from the president to the local kagawad. We are timid and we cower behind our shameful indifference and we don’t want to assert our rights and fight against injustice lest it disrupt our cozy little relationships within this hopelessly entangled corrupt web. This fear of ours is what allows this screwed-up way of life to flourish.

There is an urgent need for a cast change. These guys won’t do it for us, the sooner we realize this, the better off we will all be. These guys won’t do it for us not because they don’t want to but because they are all so part of the trapo system, so well-invested, so comfortable. We need women and men who will not countenance compromising with evil and corruption and cowardice. Women and men who will understand that service requires sacrifice and that they do not have a monopoly on capacity and good intentions. Women and men who will serve for one term and give the many millions out there a chance to render service to their country.

We need to quit looking around. We will have to take our country back ourselves.

I attended a summit meeting sponsored by the Department of Health regarding the runaway migration of our Human Health Resources, yes, we health workers are now referred to as HHRs. Quite an interesting meeting, got to listen to officials from the Departments of Labor and Foreign Affairs as well as a number of recruiters and members of the academe.

The numbers who have left are staggering. And our nursing schools have become transformed into factories churning out record figures of graduates to meet the awesome demand. A foreign recruiter summed it up best: this boom will not last indefinitely and the Chinese are fast learning English and we critically need to maintain our competitive edge and dispassionately recognize the fleeting nature of this export product of ours.

Between human health resource and export product, I personally prefer the latter appellation because it allows us to become more objective with our policies. We don’t need to get emotional about the issues because we have to face it, we are totally outclassed compared to other countries in producing vehicles, electronic devices, food, construction materials, energy, war materiel, etc. But we can supply the world with our caring and competent citizens, nothing to be ashamed about.

This is why I did not agree with this foreign recruiter’s suggestion to compel nursing graduates to serve their communities for a period of 2 years before being “deployed” abroad because we need to get all these professionals working and earning as soon as possible and remitting a portion of their earnings.

Our responsibility is to make certain that these remittances are plowed back into upgrading our crumbling health and educational infrastructure instead of ending up in sacks furtively distributed to our traditional politicians. We have a great product and we need to keep it that way.

Many people continue to ask me why I aspire for high political office without having the requisite traditional political experience and dynastic pedigree. I tell those willing to listen that I take my cue from a 33 year old lawyer from Virginia who wrote this line in what turned out to be his country’s certificate of birth: “….that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Nobody paid much attention to that line for a hundred years until Lord Acton of “absolute power corrupting absolutely” fame realized the explosive implications of that loaded sentence. That we, the citizens who always felt powerless and puny and irrelevant have the right to register our objections in the most revolutionary manner possible. When we witness gross injustice, criminal negligence, lethal corruption, wanton greed, we, the people have the right to take back the power we invested in our leaders who have been unfaithful to their oaths.

Jefferson thought it self-evident then. Why can’t we see this? GMA, Erap and every single one of these trapos remain accountable to us. They are certainly not divine, much less indispensable. Years of failure and mismanagement constitute clear proof that we can do better without their expertise and experience.

We need not offer excuses about the gullibility of the masses or the poverty-crazed choices that voters make. It is up to us to actively resist, to fight, to see our tormentors as our equals at best and do battle. Life is too short to be spent hiding behind lame excuses. Let’s listen to Thomas Jefferson.