What would Lolo Pepe say?Sep 4, '09 5:47 AMfor everyone

Got this from Jessica Zafra’s website.  She opened an essay contest about what would Jose Rizal say about the Philippines if he was alive today. I fell in love with this contest entry when I read it (the writer eventually won the contest: a fresh copy of Noli Me Tangere.  Oh, how I wanted one).  I could imagine our national hero, Jose Rizal, actually delivering a speech in front of millions of Filipino people at present time.  I suddenly wonder how our Filipino heroes would feel about the country’s state today if they were still alive. ***Lolo Pepe’s resignation. Though I am flattered that my countrymen would see me as a hero, never once did I feel like one. I never did anything because it would get me recognition. Everything I have done, was because I believed that despite all of this country’s flaws, we had promise. We still do. But now I realize that I fell in love with the idea of this country. How can I not? It was and is such a beautiful idea. But more than a hundred years since, an idea it still remains. I remember pragmatically predicting, that a hundred years after our independence from Spain, we would still remain impoverished. I wrote this out of fear, thinking that providing some foresight, might cause our people to make sure that the prediction never became true. That as a people united we will say with one voice: Enough of this poverty and injustice!  But we did not. If anything the message you gave me is clear, that you have no problems about how things are today. Why else after removing a family of tyrants from power, a family who plundered your future, and murdered your own, you would welcome them back, and return them to positions of authority. Why then would you choose a philandering leader who gambles using public funds, and pickles his body with alcohol? I guess it is not that you like the odor of corruption and moral degradation wafting around in our air, you’ve just grown accustomed to it. I doubt I ever will. A hundred years ago, I was able to figure out the source of our nation’s problems: the backward clergy, the corrupt politicians, the imperialistic elite families. It was just a simple matter of excising these unwanted tumors, instead you waited until they plasticized like cancer. Now they are stronger than ever, and have already hijacked your democracy. What I don’t understand is why you don’t do anything, or when you do successfully remove them, you hand the power right back to them. I and so many others, paid the ultimate price, because we had faith in your ability to make the right choices.

But you as a nation chose the wrong choices, not just once, but again and again over the course of a century. Sorry, but I’m through. Please consider this as my two weeks notice, I am officially retiring from being your hero, my country. You do not treat your heroes well. Were our lives so worthless that you thought it alright as to choose decisions that would lead to obvious failure? Did you choose this future because you wanted to spite us, to show us that you don’t care? So many of us believed back then, that Filipinos will find themselves in struggle, instead you found yourselves lacking. I have given everything, and while I would like to help today, I find that I have nothing left to sacrifice. God watch over your endeavors, for I no longer will.  Thank you and goodbye. Tags: military salute, pinoy tayo!, fortune cookie, wish listPrev: I'm baaack! ϋ