4

Basic respect and appreciation of and love for the natural environment

Deeper Eco-Spirituality

Comprehension and respect for biodiversity in stability of symbiosis

Comprehension and respect for ecosystems as fragile habitats

  1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

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Academe Challenged to Address Festering Questions About EDSA Upheavals

By By Dr. Noemi Alindogan-Medina

Then chairperson, Lambat-Liwanag Network Council of Leaders

Then chairperson, Social Sciences Department, Philippine Normal University

SOME festering questions have remained after all the clouds of dust had cleared, for the time being, after the “EDSA-dos” and “EDSA-tres” upheavals in January and May of 2001. And if justices cannot really be expected to always remain totally impartial, another voice of cold impartiality can be expected to come from the Academe.

Analyses of current events and developments that fully dignify the integrity of the Academe would be more useful to future writers of Philippine history books, than all the partisan editorials and analyses in all the partisan newspapers. This is why in the teaching of History, the Academe of tomorrow may have to depend on the work being done well by the Academe of today.

Is the Academe of today doing that work well, if at all? Or are we expecting the History teachers of tomorrow to depend more on future History textbooks written based on newspaper clippings of partisan analyses and officially-endorsed under the auspices of partisan education officials? Responsible history-teaching, should be a continuum. Like history itself, it is a continuing relay of the Torch of Truth, from the distant past to the distant future.

While the Philippine Normal University (PNU) has been proud to play an active role in the events as active citizens in currently unfolding history, and while it is also true that university professors, officials and students can won over to either side of rabid partisanship, the Academe itself as a social institution is duty-bound to, and challenged by, its own self-esteem and public credibility to come up with serious studies on the roots, implications and consequences of all these developments that led to angry mass-ups at EDSA.

PNU and other academic centers have the duty to society to make sober, non-partisan and deeply-rooted inquiries and come up with real wisdom applied to these festering questions:

1. In responding to the needs of the immediate moment the Supreme Court considered it to be in the people’s interest to proclaim as legitimate succession the assumption of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to the presidency. But without going into the prudence of that judgment’s content, what would be the logical effects on the stability of the rule of law in this country? A sitting president was removed from office by an unconsummated impeachment trial, after it was pronounced guilty by mammoth crowds massed up in Metro Manila and other cities. But does the 1987 Philippine Constitution provide for such a process as a valid verdict from massed-up millions? Did not the Supreme Court, perhaps inadvertently, allow a very consequential violation of a basic Constitutional right to “presumption of innocence until found guilty without reasonable doubt by a competent court”? Has “people power” been quietly legislated into the fundamental law to constitute a competent court? Wouldn’t that development institutionalize “lynch-mob” justice and officially end the rule of law?

2. How about the matter of admitting as evidence a newspaper clipping of a person’s diary (that of the former executive secretary) to conclude another person’s state of mind (that then President Estrada was seriously considering to resign and, therefore, in effect already resigned)? Wouldn’t this be a dangerous precedent jurisprudence? Can inferior courts now conclude from newspaper clippings and unsworn diaries in trying their cases, following the High Tribunal’s pragmatic example?

3. How about suffrage? How can the constitutionally-guaranteed exercise of suffrage to produce an election winner be thwarted by the combined action of the military and uncounted civilians who wouldn’t even more honestly call their act a rebellion and insist that it was just a Constitutional succession? The Martial Law Constitution of 1973 was ratified by a mere show of hands at government-organized rallies. We rejected the legitimacy of that supposed ratification because those who were at the rallies were not even proven to be voters and more so because the raised hands were not even counted and proved to represent even just a plurality of anything. Were the EDSA crowds counted? Were they of voting age and duly registered? Could the result of suffrage (Presidential election of 1998) be set aside this way without violating the Constitution?

4. When can Filipino civilians unseat a president that they don’t like, without depending on the military?

5. And still about the military, how come the military top brass could simply turn their backs on an incumbent commander-in-chief who was to be replaced not earlier than the day after, without having to declare or later admit a rebellion and without having to face the court martial for insubordination? Can the military brass completely and permanently deny having mounted a rebellion just because that rebellion won? What would be the lasting effects of that action and impunity on the sense of discipline of the military establishment?

6. Most importantly, how well do the country’s intelligentsia, academe and media understand what is going on in the hearts and minds of the impoverished but largely-silent majority? Wasn’t saying that the followers of Estrada are all ignorant and illogical is to be ignorant and illogical, and that they were all mercenaries an oversimplification? Does the supposed “brain” understand the rest of the body, let alone the bigger but silent part of that body?

Already, some of the professors in law schools and military-oriented institutions are having serious difficulties in answering these and similar questions from their students.

It is our duty to society to seek and give the most honest, the most coherent, most thoroughgoing and most forward-looking answers. And we are proud to say that a growing section of the Academe has started seriously doing this.

After all, while mass media, book writers and other opinion leaders can pragmatically reflect the views of the winners in political contests and/or adopt the subjective conclusions popular among the more articulate sections of the population, the Academe has to keep its commitment to the Truth regardless of the ever-changing configurations of political power. We can dare to be like the child who shouts out the dangerous observation that the emperor has no clothes!

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