The Estonians defied the Nazis and the Russians by asserting their cultural symbols, particularly their banned songs, and prevailed over incredible oppression through what is now known globally as the ”Singing Revolution.” While that has since received worldwide acclaim, it would not have been an easy feat at the time of its creation and implementation.
The Civil Rights movement, the anti-poverty forces, and the anti-war movement joined efforts in the late '60s and early '70s in opposing the Vietnam War. It cost Lyndon Johnson a second term, and we inflicted upon American politics the enigmatic personality of Richard Nixon.
The people power in the Philippines in the mid-'80s, which saw the religious and secular matrons, university students and taxi drivers lay their bodies between military battalions and rebelling young armed forces officers, cost the ailing Ferdinand Marcos his presidency and enshrined a yellow-draped housewife into the embrace of the Filipino people and the hearts of an awakening citizenry around the world. “People Power” has since become a battle cry in many parts of the world.
A Chicago Southside community organizer prevailing over an entrenched and well-respected former first lady in a party primary, and a triumph over a well-decorated veteran of Vietnam for the nation's primal executive office, rang a death knell to American exceptionalism (the sense that “we, the people,” by divine providence, are meant to guide, if not rule over an unenlightened world) and its concomitant imperial policies and designs, particularly in the harvest and management of fossil fuel located in strategic places around the world, and ushered a turning into eco-democracy that is in the process of taking form across the planet
I hesitate to use dichotomies for they often mislead more than enlighten, but to say for the moment that there are two forms of citizen's awakenment manifest across the Union might be momentarily helpful. The first is symbolized by 9/11 that unleashed an epidemic of fear focusing on threat, real and imagined. The second culminated in the Obama family's entry into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., a harbinger of a discovery that we can, and we will, is a choice we can make-the audacity to hope, as it were.
The epidemic of fear is widespread, fanned by GWB's patently hopeful religious metaphor of millennialism turned morbid by those who turned it into a foreign policy of imperial exceptionalism, and into military strategies of impersonal Armageddon accompanied by the assault on terror with the reign of terror itself.
Not unlike the misplaced flower in Picasso's Guernica, the seeds of hope blossomed and flourished nevertheless, in small nooks and crannies of our common existence, of bright students forgoing the MBA of greed for something more meaningfully significant, for soldiers listening to their conscience and bucking senseless posting without clear and acceptable rationale, of countless otherwise ordinary citizens refusing the power of corrupt political authority over the authority of authenticity where accountability and transparency rules the day.
I bumped into a young Chamorro acquaintance recently. He was sporting dark glasses and looking a tad morose. Having not seen him awhile, I enticed his company for a cup of coffee and being respectful of age, my junior of considerable age difference, he reluctantly complied. I had known him to be a bubbly and ebullient personality so I was curious on what brought about the change in style and demeanor. Sheepishly, he explained that he was avoiding his family and kin, particularly his mom, because his uncle was running for office and he is being pressured to give his public support. Obviously, he has strong reservations over his uncle's candidacy.
In the '70s, a maternal uncle was one of President Marcos' close and well placed associates. A recent colleague, upon discovering this relationship, exclaimed: “You were that close and you are still working?!?!” Many members of my public high school class of 1960, a cream of the crop in Marcos' bailiwick, did well in Mr. Marcos' administration prior to and after he declared martial law in 1972, but my own career and profession took me to the other side of the aisle.
Though naturalized as a U.S. citizen in the early '80s, I continued to vote during Philippine elections but when it was time to find a replacement for Cory, it was clear that reactionary forces were still entrenched in power (Marcos ruled and was deposed with the active and later decline of support of many Chambers of Commerce), and I skipped town so as not to witness Marcos' distant cousin Fidel Ramos' election. The politicos did the Russian roulette but nothing had substantially changed. Thus, my sympathy goes to our young CNMI citizen, and all others stepping out of traditional expectations (dubbed recently as “corrupt” by one of our judicial luminaries) of family and kin.
The awakened citizenry in the CNMI took a quiet turn with the election of Tina Sablan to the 16th Legislature. Her subsequent performance made a dramatic demonstration that politics in its current legislative form can be transformed, and done well. We would be foolish not to send her to the upper chamber of that legislative hall.
Being a skeptical democrat with a small “d” thinking that no substantial change can be brought about by the election process, which simply promotes representational (republican) democracy without mass participation of constituents beyond the election, the entry of social activist Democrat with a big “D” Angelo to be mayor of Saipan is a challenge to those of us ivory tower eggheads to declare our commitments, if not our loyalties, and join the fray, being clear that this is just the beginning and not by any means an end.
Among fellow VoteCNMI conversants are those who expound on what/who they are against more than what/who they are for. As a microcosm of society, we too have proponents of the climate of fear, as there are prophets of the era of hope. But clearly, we have an awakened group. That counts for something.
The election countdown begins. We head for the polls on the 7th of November, and this time, I am not skipping town.
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Vergara is a regular contributor to the Saipan Tribune's Opinion Section
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