The culture of protest; JDV in Russia

I have read and re-read Edward W.Said’s Culture and Imperialism. He was a Palestinian who became a US citizen and respected scholar. The book is not an easy read I am afraid. To me his most important message is that while imperialism imposes its politics and culture in the countries they conquer, in time the defeated people also develop their own culture of protest.

In time that culture of protest becomes hidden beneath layers of time and superficial characteristics.

 It becomes tempting to colonizers to presume the domination was complete and that the conquered people will have been changed so completely as their little brown brothers.

That is not true. Said says the culture of protest assumes a character of its own and soon it manifests itself in different forms. I think it is true of the Philippines. No matter how westernized it has become thanks to ubiquitous American and western influence it retains its own way of seeing.

It is not as pervasive as we may want it to be but it is happening. Filipinos are re-discovering themselves and their history in different ways from what their conquerors might have expected.

 Nothing lasts and it is true of the colonial powers that dominated our culture and political development.

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A group of civic-spirited citizens have now undertaken to crowdsource opinions on just what Filipinos think is wrong with their government and what they would like changed. They have opened a website with the link www.bayanko.org.ph. It has been doing well and in just a few days has received thousands of hits and visits.

I am one of the organizers of the website. We have partner organizations and friends from different sectors of society (although we avoid politicians) to get a more accurate reading of the Filipino mind today especially in the light of the PDAF and DAP scandals.

A friend suggested that we use change.org — the platform of change for our cause if we wanted to get even more hits and visits. I am grateful for the suggestion but that is not what the website is about. The hits and visits, it is hoped, will later convert into commitments that will evolve into a movement for a new constitution for a new country. Crowdsourcing is only the first phase through which to identify Filipinos who can be mobilized for the cause. We certainly hope that they will support real change, that will our political system and structure.

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One issue that came up in FB just as I was writing this column was the PCOS elections of 2010 and 2013. Up to this day the Comelec has failed to answer questions like why there were no digital signatures and the source code was not authenticated. But the electoral body had the effrontery to suggest that it is going to buy new PCOS machines for 2016. The fear was that the old ones that contain the evidence of the failed elections would be destroyed.

Already candidates are poised for another PCOS elections with 2010 and  2013 questions still unresolved. There was an attempt to project Grace Poe, Fernando Poe’s Jr.’s daughter who was the PCOS senatorial candidate from nowhere who topped the elections. Isa na namang himala ng PCOS. The rationale is that she is not corrupt and she topped the 2013 senatorial election anyway. Ergo she should be a good presidential candidate. Well, after the P-Noy debacle on his doctrine of no corruption, no poverty, she was immediately thumbed down by thinking Filipinos after a privileged speech on how her father was cheated. FB and columnists flooded the social media with cries of “but your father was not qualified to be president anyway.”

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This column received a 17-page statement made by former Speaker Jose De Venecia in Vladivostok, Russia recently. He is the founding chairman of the standing committee of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) that includes the ruling United Russia Party that hosted the conference. The Russian party was founded by President Vladimir Putin.

De Venecia tackled many issues that I would have wanted to include in this column.

He asks a very relevant question in our time, “will peace be easier — or harder — to organize in our new multilateral world?”

This is an important question and the stock answer of most foreign policy analysts is it will be harder because “multilateral systems are more prone than bipolar systems to conflict.”

Moreover de Venecia adds “in a multilateral system there is no clear leadership, regions tend to drift into crises.”

As we are seeing it happen now in different parts of the world he argues that “these crises can easily flare up — at a time of widespread economic and cultural change, such as what we have in our time.”

“In the end, peace in our multilateral world will depend on the willingness of the middle powers to do their part in preventing any great power from seeking hegemony over any region.” That means most of the countries that are in ICAPP.

Although more difficult, he says, it is possible to find a common ground and that is what world leaders should pursue.

“Of course decision-making in a multilateral world will be more difficult — much more difficult — to make than those made in a bilateral system. The search for common ground — on which varying cultures, governing styles and political economies may stand together — can be protracted, tedious — even rancorous.”

This is a role for an inter-faith dialogue. He then refers to two world issues in which the ICAPP can help.

“We in ICAPP urge the revival of the Global Interfaith Dialogue among Christians, Muslims, Shiites and Sunnis, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and others to reduce politico-religious tensions and conflicts in various parts of the world, which we in ICAPP had the privilege to propose and which was endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 2004.”

The other issue is the “raging conflict in the South China Sea, West Philippine Sea to the Filipinos, and East Sea to the Vietnamese, with conflicting sovereignty claims.”

“It may be settled, we believe, by temporarily shelving the issue of sovereignty, as earlier proposed by Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader of China’s peaceful rise; revive the Seismic Survey Agreement signed by China, the Philippines, and Vietnam in 2004; undertake joint oil/gas exploration and joint development with an equitable sharing of production and profits; designate “fishing corridors”; demilitarize the disputed islets through the phased withdrawal of armed garrisons; and convert the zone of conflict into a Zone of Peace, Friendship, Cooperation and Development.”

This is perhaps the most realistic, most common-sensical solution to the problem of the Spratlys and Paracels, and which could be subsequently joined by Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan, and could also be the solution to the problem between China and Japan in the Senkaku Straits or Diaoyu in the East China Sea.”