[Address:  Simulan Natin Online Convention.  GoodGovPH. 21 August 2021]

My warm greetings to the participants of this Simulan Natin Online Convention.  I thank the youth leaders in GoodGovPh, Good Government Philippines, for convening this.  Thank you for this opportunity to  share with you my thoughts on our forthcoming elections, and on how we can participate in it meaningfully.

I am very happy I am speaking to young people.  Youth in senior high school.  Youth in college.  Youth beginning to enter into the world of work in order, as they say, to earn a living.  Youth in Mindanao.  Many of you belong to Generation Z.  Those of you born between 1996 and 2010, that is, between the ages of 11 and 25, belong to Generation Z. 

Memories from an Earlier Generation

I belong to a much earlier generation.  I was born in 194-gotten.  So was President Duterte.  So was Sen. Dick Gordon.  Coming from a generation earlier, and so from 19-even-more-forgotten, was former Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile.   We have memories of when Ferdinand Marcos was elected to power.  But of how he imposed martial law on the country, and fomented social division and violence in what was once a much more peaceful Mindanao.  Under him, the divisions between the Muslims, the Lumad and the Christian settlers of Mindanao worsened.  He supported the violent "Christian" Ilagas, who needed to be opposed by similarly violent Muslim Barracudas and Blackshirts.  He exploited the Jabidah Massacre, which most believe he instigated.  Against the calls for the independence of Mindanao, which at first were not taken seriously by the Mindanao Muslims but eventually gained the support of the Moro National Liberation Front, he justified his imposition of martial law nationwide.  I belong to a generation that remembers martial law with horror.  They were years of the conjugal dictatorship, of strong central government, government by decrees enforced by the military through repression or through the barrel of a gun.  But they were also years of great valor among the people, when students your age dared to oppose the dictator with their idealism, their futures and their lives.  They proudly allied themselves with opposition groups, with or within the Church or with the Kabataang Makabayan and the newly-re-founded Communist Party of the Philippines.  For God, for human dignity, for freedom, they were tortured , imprisoned, and killed.  The Marcos nightmare was broken by the EDSA People Power Movement, which was not just in EDSA in QC but here in Davao in the courageous demonstrations and rallies against the dictator.  The People Power dream was for a Philippines liberated from political dictatorship, social injustice and poverty.  Its dream was for a functioning socially-just democracy, many of whose beliefs are enshrined in the 1987 Constitution.  Unfortunately, many of these dreams were disappointed, many of these values trumped by self-interest or corruption.  Poverty continued to be worst nationwide in Mindanao, especially in Muslim Mindanao.  Here the call for independence of the Muslim people, the Bangsamoro, now under the determined leadership of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), continued to be strong.  Moro was no longer a bad word;  it was borne with pride and called Muslims in the Philippines  to unity, even as ethnic divisions among the Moros pulled them apart.  We remember President Estrada's all out war against the Muslims, the naked contradiction of the Philippine State against the Moro whom we hoped would embrace the descriptor, Filipino, with pride.  We remember the centuries-old historical injustices against the Bangsamoro and how only through the intervention of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation the journey towards lasting peace in Mindanao began anew under an Aquino President who called himself Pinoy.   We remember the sterling role that was played by my co-speaker, Professor Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, as chair of the GPH Peace Panel.  But we also the siege of Zamboanga.  And the horror of Mamasapano.  And how even with the Comprehensive Agreement Bangsamoro and the Bangsamoro Organic law and the now functioning BAMM all is yet unfinished. 

I'm sorry for rambling.  I know your generation is very different.  But we are shaped by our memories.  Without our memories, we are but victims of dementia, unable to find our way home, unable to find our way to one another.  Without our memories, we forget our identity, the lolo and lola, the mother and father, the teachers and the idols, the friends and the persons  who have spoken to our hearts.  Without our memories we forget the persons we have long wanted to be, despite the many times we seem to have forgotten.  We forget the dreams which give us hope, especially when we commit ourselves to their realization, or better, when we actually come together to work collaboratively for their realization.

You Bring the Uniqueness of Generation Z to the Elections

We're coming to an election in October of next year. For these elections, the special genius of our respective generations, our memories, our dreams, our hopes for the futures, our commitments to make those dreams come true are all important.   You bring the unique viewpoints, the special competencies, the refreshing sensitivities of your Generation Z to the ballot box.  Correct me if I am wrong.  But your generation seems to be open to great diversity.  You are comfortable with people who are different.  In our time, a member of the LGBTQ++ was considered unnatural, or weird, or sick.  For this reason he or she was discriminated against, bullied, persecuted, outcaste.  It was not easy in my generation to say, "I am gay."  Or, "I am trans."  That's different in your generation.  It's easier to say in your generation,  "I am me and you are you, and that's okay! That's cool!"  And we in our generation are learning from you.  In our generation, we enjoyed singers and dancers from Hollywood in the United States or from Liverpool in the United Kingdom;  in your generation it's the singers and dancers from the Philippines, and if not from the Philippines, from Japan or Korea.  I'm amazed at those from your generation who can sing in Korean and can dance, and move and look like the BTS!  In our generation, I think we were driven by ideals, even if not realized they were like lies.  In your generation, you seem to be driven by what works.  You love not according to a philosophy of love, but by your experience of love, even if love today is mediated by social media, and sometimes social media doesn't work.  You don't write love letters;  you send emoticons.  You like; you unlike.   You friend; you unfriend.  You are pragmatic, careful with what's yours, your money; you're discriminating in what you consume.  But you're terribly creative.  You do incredible things with computers and tablets and cellphones.  In your choices, you show a concern for the socially disadvantaged, the poor, the marginalized, the outcaste, perhaps because in your lives you're not afraid to be different and you're sensitive to being different. In our generation we were more worried about being correct and about what people said about us.

Crucially Important:  Register.  Express Yourselves.

I guess my recommendation for you today is to express yourselves in your ballot.  Your ballot is like a cellphone.  Your cellphone communicates you.  You don't leave your cellphone around unused.  You don't leave it in its original packaging unopened.  You don't leave it uninitialized, without power, without load.  To shape the future of our country you need to vote.  To empower yourself to vote so that your vote communicates what you desire, you need to register.  Period.  Register, or your cellphone communicates nothing.   Register, or your chance to make a difference is extinguished. 

When you express yourselves in your ballot, the openness of your generation to diversity is crucially important.  It makes a difference.  In Mindanao, we have killed one another because we were each different from the other; we couldn't deal with the different other; we othered the other because of our fierce dogmas and our infallible convictions.  In your ballot, your generation's openness to dialogue, collaboration and mutual understanding is important.  In Mindanao, we have experienced not dialogue but dictation, not collaboration but killing, not mutual understanding but mutual demonization.  In Mindanao, your generation's openness to a creative pragmatism is important, where lasting peace has been thwarted by traditionalism or datuism or even by religious texts torn away from the one God of Peace and Compassion whom we all worship, whether Muslim, Christian or Lumad.

Appreciate that We Can Still Vote Freely and Meaningfully

When you decide to register and consider the names you will write on your ballot, we all need to step back, to value the opportunity we have in the Philippines to vote and to vote meaningfully.  Countless attempts to undermine the right to vote in this country have been thwarted by people who thankfully understand the value of the vote.  Our situation is different from China, where only the Party votes for the leader, and the leader determines the Party's votes.  Our situation is different from Russia, where the main oppositionist to the incumbent, Alexei Navalny, was poisoned in exile  and is now imprisoned in Siberia.  Our situation is different from Nicaragua, where the incumbent, Daniel Ortega, has jailed all the seven opposition candidates.  Our situation is different from Hong Kong, whose youthful pro-democracy leaders like Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow have been jailed in China for their insistence on democratic values.  Our situation is different from Myanmar where 95% of the population voted for their democratic leaders, Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Myint, but where the military stole the election from the people, incarcerated the elected leaders, and since Feb. 2 has been killing, torturing and suppressing pro-democratic youth demonstrators in the streets.  Our situation is different from the United States of America, once respected as the model for democracies in the world, but whose democracy is now critically wounded by a past President who has refused to respect a peaceful and orderly election, has himself led an insurrection against the Capitol Building, and continues to undermine democracy by lies and a politics fueled by obstructive partisanship and overt racism.  Our democracy is different from Afghanistan whose democracy was so dependent on the apron strings of the US military, it collapsed ignominiously when the apron strings were pulled away by the US in national self interest.  President Biden had said, democracies deliver.  In Afghanistan, the US democracy delivered Afghanistan to the Taliban.

Two Crucial Choices

I said your vote is like a cellphone in your hands.  You need to use it to be heard.  To push this cellphone metaphor a little further, let me suggest that there are two major sets of apps you can choose from in casting your votes.

The first app is named Autocracy.  The second app is Democracy.

The third app is called: Ignore Common Home.  The fourth app is Protect Common Home

Facing the 2022 election which apps would you choose to open?

If you choose the app Autocracy, you will be saying yes to candidates who are strong leaders.  They believe in themselves, in their leadership and in the small group of people around them.  They govern with a strong arm, or through the force of arms, decisively supported by the security forces of the State, the military and the police.  They prefer to be feared than to be understood;  to be terrifying rather than loving. Autocracies are the global trend in the world today.  More and more countries are giving up the freedoms of democracies and the human rights democracies protect for governance systems where one man (like Lukasheno of Bellarus) or a small group of persons (like the Communist Party of China led by Xi Jinping or the Communist Party of North Korea led by Kim Jong-un).  These autocracies in pursuit of the common good suppress the rights of individuals willy nilly (e.g. the Uighurs of China suppressed in favor of the Han majority, or the Blacks of America suppressed by white supremacists).  In these autocracies, the rulers have to make wise well-informed decisions in the pursuit of the common good to succeed.  Citizens have to be obedient.  Many such leaders think they are wise or that they possess the truth.  Sometimes they do.  Sometimes they succeed.  But when they lack wisdom or truth or sufficient science, they fail.  As they impose their positions against minorities or defend their positions against critics, human rights are trampled on.  When people protest against human rights violations, they are repressed in the name of the State or in the name of the People.  If you want this kind of government for the Philippines, open this app Autocracy. 

If you choose the app Democracy, you will be saying yes to candidates who truly believe government is of the people, by the people and for the people.  Ultimately, the mission to govern comes from the mandate of the people and their consent to be governed.  For these candidates what the people wills is crucial.  It is not he or she who makes the people obey him or her; it is rather the people who make the politicians obey the people.  They appreciate that the wisdom of the people is superior to the wisdom of individual politicians.  Consultations with the people therefore are vital for these politicians, just as local and national discussion of issues and consensus building  are vital for the people.  The shared ability of all to come to an enlightened assessment of the truth through news services, public opinion, university research is crucial.  In a government of, by and for the people, the human rights of each individual is sacred.  The common good is not achieved unless it defines a state of human flourishing for all without exception.  Democracies however are vulnerable to the attacks of individuals, within or beyond the democracy, who are motivated by private interest, including corruption in selfish interest.  Therefore the interests  and values of a democracy must be safeguarded by the participants of a democracy, and each democracy must be safeguarded by a family of democracies.  E.g.  When a democracy is attacked by a leader who refuses to accept the results of a valid election through lies and insurrection, members of the democracy must come together to protect the democracy by neutralizing the toxic leader and recognizing truth.  When in a war on COVID 19 the human rights of individuals are trampled on by the State, beyond the push back of the members of the democracy, the family of democracies must safeguard the threatened democracy by sanctions.  In a democracy people are more important than power.  The people make sure that power is used not just for the rich and the wealthy, but for all.  If you want this kind of government for the Philippines, please press open this app Democracy.

Please note that if you press App Democracy, App Autocracy will close.  But if you press App Autocracy, App Democracy will close.  In the real order, you cannot have a democracy that is an autocracy, nor an autocracy that is a democracy.

The Third App is Ignore Common Home.  The third app opens you to candidates who lead you in their policies to ignore the environment, which is our common home.  It allows you to consider the raging wildfires in northwestern USA, in Greece, in Italy, in France and in Morocco and the unprecedented floods in China, in northern Europe and now in Japan as just unfortunate occurrences in other countries, with no imperative affecting my individual behavior or our collective behavior as a local community in a global human society.  The unbridled consumerist needs of human beings must be met, which create gargantuan production machines to fulfill these needs and create new needs, which exploit and plunder the environment to feed the production machines, which richly rewards the actors in the production machine, and discards human beings who cannot participate in the production process.  They are the uneducated, the non tech savvy, the retired, the redundant, the elderly, the yet unborn human beings.  The third app lauds candidates who cry, Build! Build! Build! or Consume! Consume! Consume! and Mine! Mine! Mine! because they believe the most important thing to maintain is the trajectory towards individual and national wealth so that comfort and wealth can be mine!  Focused on the consumerist economy, they have no need to care about an environment, no interest in a common home shared with human beings and other creatures in nature.  If you want politicians who ignore the environment, choose app Ignore Common Home.

The fourth app is Protect Common Home.  The fourth app opens you to candidates who understand the serious deterioration in our environment, our common home, as the result of human activities.  These are candidates who realize we human beings have killed our rainforests, denied wildlife its natural habitats, overheated our planet with carbon emissions, polluted our common home with unbiodegradable plastics and toxic waste, threatened our sources of fresh water and clean air with industrial emissions and disrespected our relationship with our fellow creatures on this planet.  The fourth app opens you to candidates who are sensitive to the relationship between the abuse of the earth and the pandemic and who realize that we cannot continue to live as human beings on planet that we collectively destroy it through our consumerism.  We cannot enjoy  the beautiful biodiverse garden God created for us as we turn it into a gaping open pit mine in Tampakan.  We cannot be the breadbasket of the Philippines and poison our rivers forever with the toxic tailings of mines.  We cannot solve our urban garbage problems by burning trash to pollute and poison the air.  The fourth app will open you to candidates searching for a new normal.  It will open your heart to saving our common home here in Mindanao.   

Again, in this cellphone, if you press App Ignore Common Home for Consume! Consume! Consume! the App Protect Common Home closes.  If you open the App Protect Common Home the App Ignore Common Home closes.  If you press, App Ignore Common Home, you will witness the destruction of the Mindanao environment.  If you press, App Protect Common Home you will participate in saving the planet. 

On the other hand, if you press and app and it doesn't show you the candidates you require, you must search for them, demand that they come out of their private lives and enter into public service.  You might even, for the love of God, country and the planet, become a candidate yourself!

Thank You, Youth!

Thank you, Generation Z,  for your patience in listening to this old man from the 194gotten generation!  May your voting cellphone not remain unused.  Register!  Bring to your vote the genius of your generation for Mindanao!  Make your considered choice between App Autocracy and App Democracy.  Between App Ignore Common Home and App Preserve Common Home.  In our troubled world today, let us treasure our ability yet to participate in real and meaningful democratic elections! 

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