PHNO-INQUIRER: INDEPENDENCE DAY: 1898 AND 2012

INQUIRER: INDEPENDENCE DAY: 1898 AND
2012
[PHOTO -Independence Day Araw ng Kasarinlan: Aguinaldo
Shrine where Emilio Aguinaldo declared the country's independence from
Spain]
MANILA, JULY 6, 2012
(INQUIRER) Passion For Reason By: Raul C. Pangalangan - It
is said that "We, the People" means something different to the generation that
risked life and limb to win the revolution, and that that meaning is diluted
with each passing generation.
For our country, this year was 114 years since Gen. Emilio
Aguinaldo proclaimed a new republic and, since January of this year, 25 years
from the adoption of the 1987 Constitution that codified the national consensus
embodied in the first Edsa People Power revolution. By whichever starting block,
that is enough time to dilute our sense of ownership of our founding symbols and
covenants.
Contrast that, for instance, with American constitutional tradition. US
historians remind us that in the early days of their republic, the common folk
smugly assumed that they—not the Supreme Court—had the power to interpret their
constitution.
Those of the revolutionary generation put their lives and dreams on the line.
(Aguinaldo was a bit more poetic, describing the Filipino fighters as he
returned from Hong Kong exile in 1898: They "placed their lives in danger a
thousand times.") They were the authors of their constitution and were entitled
to interpret it as well.
The Americans adopted their constitution in 1787, and it wasn't until 1803
that their Supreme Court asserted its power of "judicial review" to strike down
laws found repugnant to the constitution and began to entrench itself as the
constitution's chief expositor.
It took barely 16 years to mark the shift from what is now called "popular
constitutionalism" (that is, the constitution read according to a communal sense
of justice) toward "counter-majoritarianism" (the constitution read by unelected
judges and nonpolitical courts).
For our country, enough time has passed for "We, the sovereign Filipino
People" to yield their interpretive power to the courts. But reclaim it we did
in the impeachment trial just past, wherein the elected deputies in Congress in
effect reasserted the sovereign prerogative to make their preferred meanings
prevail over the Chief Justice's, about the duty of disclosure and transparency
in the statement of assets, liabilities and net worth and on whether
nondisclosure alone, without proof of corruption or plunder, is impeachable.

And the very next day, the Supreme Court itself echoed that popular judgment
when it lifted its longstanding veil of secrecy over the justices' SALNs, thus
recognizing the primacy of the people's over the court's reading of the
constitution.
* * *
"In the town of Cavite-Viejo, Province of Cavite, on the 12th day of June
1898 …." Thus began the proclamation of our declaration of independence. Note
the significant dates.
On June 18, Aguinaldo established what he called the "dictatorial government
with full authority, civil and military, in order to determine first the real
needs of the country."
On June 20, he issued a decree to provide for local governments, including
the election of the local councils, the organization of the police, courts,
civil registry and tax collection.
On July 23, Aguinaldo replaced the dictatorial government with the
revolutionary government.
On Aug. 13, Spain surrendered Manila to the Americans—though the Filipino
revolutionaries controlled the rest of the country and had in fact cut off all
supplies to the old city—in the words of a US military report—"so completely
that [its] inhabitants, as well as the Spanish troops, were forced to live on
horse and buffalo meat, and the Chinese population on cats and dogs."
On Jan. 20, 1899, the Revolutionary Congress adopted the Malolos
Constitution.
In February 1899, the Philippine-American War erupted.
Reading the legal issuances of Aguinaldo, I am impressed at the care and
attention that he gave to the legal structuring of a revolutionary triumph.
Aguinaldo issued decrees to create a "Literary University of the Philippines"
including a faculty of law (with a law syllabus attached, an impressive 6-year
course modeled on those of traditional continental civil law countries);
regulating the movement of foreigners; raising public funds through loans, bonds
and tonnage dues on "merchant vessels sailing from Manila to ports under the
jurisdiction of the Revolutionary Government"; organizing various departments,
including our diplomatic service; organizing a Supreme Court and lower court;
and issuing monetary currency.
That is all impressive, considering that they were still at war with Spain
and wary of a rather suspicious ally.
Still, the June 12 declaration expressly referred to this ally. The
declaration was made "under the protection of [the] Powerful and Humanitarian
Nation, The United States of America" and the red, white and blue in our flag
"commemorat[es] the flag of the United States of America, as a manifestation of
our profound gratitude towards this Great Nation for its disinterested
protection which it lent us and continues lending us."
The Filipinos who celebrated Independence Day June 12 are a century removed
from the blood and gore by which we purchased the right in 1898 to call
ourselves a nation equal to any another in the world.
They are a quarter century removed from the less bloody but still dramatic
upheaval of Edsa I in 1986 by which we reclaimed our pride as a nation. Perhaps
the emblems of nationhood have been reduced to empty rituals for the current
generation of Filipinos.
Scholars say the nation is but an "imagined community," a sense of oneness
deliberately conjured and willed into being. We need to sustain that noble
imagining by seizing historical moments like the impeachment trial and the
Scarborough showdown with China.
We must marshal these concrete and constructive issues to give form and
substance to the ineffable yearnings of nationhood.


Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
All
rights reserved




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