Imaginary people / Return the Balangiga Bells

People must be the most abused word in political advocacies. That is also true with the protagonists in today’s efforts for constitutional reform. I have been close enough to the scene to know how people is used by partisans. The effect is self-deception. If we mount a stage, give a speech and assert our views and use the word people as our subject, then it becomes a claim to be the people’s voice. I have been long enough in advocacies to know this is not true. At best, all groups have their followers, a couple of hundreds at the most, the rest is a mindless crowd. I would require a more stringent standard for partisans to claim that the people are behind them. Otherwise the people they claim as supporters are merely imaginary. In the Philippine political scene they use surveys to put numbers to support for their advocacy and say that people are behind them. But if we are trying to wean away Philippine politics from popularity contests to which the masses are the most prone, why should we expect constitutional reform to be popular with them? Their gullibility is precisely the subject of reform.

* * *

That does not mean that we should not endeavor to pull up the masses so they begin to understand what constitutions are for and why the present Constitution will have to be amended if the country is to move forward. The Coalition for Constitutional Change Now has perhaps stumbled on how to truly represent the people. The enemies of constitutional reform have belittled endorsements by the 1.2 million local authorities from governors to barangay captains but I think this is the jewel, a rough diamond to be polished so that it can be said that the people are behind constitutional change. No religious sect or organization can claim this. There is direct personal relation between local authority and their constituents that can be developed into a mature political relationship. From hereon, all local authority officials must get their act together and use their vast network to inform their constituents in the language they understand on why we need to reform the Constitution, what will be changed in the Constitution and why we need to do it now. They must also explain in the simplest terms possible how it will affect their daily lives and their pursuit of jobs and livelihoods for themselves and their children. This is the true political relationship – the local authority and his or her constituents, the rest are interlopers. That political relationship must be strengthened so that the official is both accessible and accountable to his or her constituents.

* * *

Return the Balangiga Bells. It may just be a historical item but Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr.is right to ask President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to request President George W. Bush to facilitate the return of three Balangiga Bells to the Philippines. The bells were taken by American troops during their occupation of Samar some 102 years ago. The return of the church bells would remove the last remaining irritant in US-Philippine bilateral relations and fill void in the country’s cultural assets.He said Ms. Arroyo should bring up the issue of the return of the Balangiga Bells when she confers with Bush at the White House inWashington D.C. on May 19.

"This long-unresolved issue of the Balangiga Bells should be one of the talking points during Ms. Arroyo’s meeting with Bush. She should try to persuade the US president that the missing bells rightfully belong to the people and the Catholic Church of Balangiga and they should get them back," Pimentel said.

* * *

The bells were taken as "war booty" by American troops under Gen. Jacob Smith who had been sent to clear Balangiga and Samar of "bandits" (rebels). They were under orders to take punitive action against rebels who had killed 48 American soldiers and wounded others of Company C of the 9th US infantry regiment then garrisoned in the coastal town of Balangiga on September 28, 1901.In the ensuing siege of Balangiga, a large part of its population was massacred and the whole town was burned and became a "howling wilderness". "I want no prisoners," Gen. Smith was quoted as saying while ordering his troops to shoot every man, woman and child above 10 years on sight. The bells of Balangiga were purposely taken by American troops because they had allegedly been tolled to signal the rebels’ attack on the garrison of the US soldiers.

* * *

"The return of the bells will help ease the hidden tensions that haunt the heirs of Balangiga rebels who were massacred by Gen. Smith’s Marines and probably even the heirs of the soldiers of US Company C who were cut down on the morning of September 28, 1901 by the bolomen of Balangiga," Pimentel said.The bells are part of the war trophies on display at a US army base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. "The US does not need the Balangiga Bells except to remind it of its colonial rule in the Philippines and its use of military might to subjugate freedom loving Filipinos. They have enough glorious accomplishments advancing the cause of freedom, democracy and peace throughout the world to last you as a nation several lifetimes," he said.

* * *

"I suggest that it is time for the custodians of the bells of Balangiga, our friends in the US, to heed Polybius’ advice which we paraphrase in this wise: Please do not make our misfortune in having lost our bells, a critical part of our people’s culture, as mere adornments of your glory," Pimentel added.

* * *

E-mail: [email protected]