My Article for OpinYon
30 November 2016
The Limits of Tolerance
How much of bad behavior have we as a Filipino nation
tolerated lately? What’s with tolerance
that it deserves its own international day of observance?
In 1996, the United Nations passed a resolution to observe
November 16 as the International Day for Tolerance. Its website[1]
says that it launched this campaign to promote tolerance, respect and dignity
across the world. It aims to reduce
negative perceptions and attitudes [towards refugees and migrants, and to
strengthen the social contract between host countries and communities, and
refugees and migrants].
It also set up a prize that may be awarded to institutions,
organizations or persons, who have contributed in a particularly meritorious
and effective manner to tolerance and non-violence. Interestingly, the winner for 2016 is the
Federal Research and Methodological Center for Tolerance Psychology and
Education (Tolerance Center, for short) of Russia.
While the Philippines has a Presidential Proclamation No 914[2]
observing the day, this year’s International Day for Tolerance came and passed
us by uneventfully. Observance of this
day is probably just confined to school activities if ever. While the UN definition seems to limit the
context to host countries, refugees and migrants, the Philippines
has its own unique context on tolerance.
Social media was full of the milestones of the five-month old Duterte Administration, not to mention the incessant destabilizing actions from detractors on mainstream media that dish out propaganda material no different from so-called fake news on social media. More particularly on November 16, internet traffic was abuzz with the admission of an extramarital relationship by a former justice secretary – a woman justice secretary at that. If anything, wrongdoings by public officials (not just women) were tolerated by a general public who had lost steam in fighting corruption.
Social media was full of the milestones of the five-month old Duterte Administration, not to mention the incessant destabilizing actions from detractors on mainstream media that dish out propaganda material no different from so-called fake news on social media. More particularly on November 16, internet traffic was abuzz with the admission of an extramarital relationship by a former justice secretary – a woman justice secretary at that. If anything, wrongdoings by public officials (not just women) were tolerated by a general public who had lost steam in fighting corruption.
The UN definition of tolerance includes lofty concepts like
respect and dignity. These are
interesting times in the country’s history as these words are being put under
the scrutiny of a nation that has awakened from years – nay, centuries – of tolerating
oppression. They elected into power a
person who was neither an oligarch nor a member of the elite. President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (PRRD) is an
iconoclast, someone who broke a lot of conventional characteristics of what
presidents of the Philippines were in the past.
PRRD turned tables on the US, the UN and the EU questioning their
interference on local affairs. Indeed, is interference a manifestation of
respect towards the Filipino people?
Coming from institutions of international statures themselves? How could we as a people, have tolerated the
dictation from foreign entities as if we were their puppets?
From the time the Philippines was colonized by the Spaniards
and the Americans; and after the braver ones were snuffed out bloodily,
Filipinos who survived were reduced to meekness and subservience just to
maintain relative peace. Unquestioned
loyalty was even manifested when Filipinos fought alongside the Americans in their wars against other
countries.
When the Americans left and Filipinos ran government, those
who belonged to the upper crust of society, became the new masters and treated
the rest of the citizens as slaves.
History is replete with stories of how the ordinary Filipino tolerated
the abuses or intolerance of the master.
How did the Filipino tolerate the abuses? How did they counter it? The same UN website[3]
offers five requirements to fight intolerance: law, education, access to
information, individual awareness, local solution. Somehow many of the actions of the people also
fall on these five. For example: the
faulty electoral process that the people tolerated was countered this time with
the sheer number of voters, the magnitude of which was already impossible to
tweak on computerized counting machines.
Half-truths, incomplete truths and angled truths that were churned out
by mainstream media was countered with real time posts on social media long
before mainstream media had time to tweak it.
To compensate for the gap on television, newspapers and radio, people
informed each other on what was going on.
And instead of looking at more of the same Luzon-bred candidates, they
pitched a local guy to fix the national problem.
Years of protest actions in the streets and in the courts
proved futile (or did it just bear fruit?).
Marginalized for ages, people used the silence of the voting booth to
show that they already had enough.
The 100-day working honeymoon period for its 16th
President was a welcome development for a people who have reached the limit of
their tolerance towards a system that is oppressive.
And the momentum has just started.
* * * * * *
Cotabato City
18 November 2016
Aveen Acuña-Gulo posts herself on Facebook as a Monumental Operations Manager (MOM). She is a Bukidnon-born Cebuano mother of three (3) Maguindanao-Ilonggo-Cotabateño children; who will always be a child at heart even if she is a hundred years old.
She wrote a column “The Voice” for the Mindanao Cross from 1991-2006.
She likes to challenge stereotypes. “Don’t worry about my opinions. It won’t make a dent to the conventional,” she says.
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