How not to wage a revolution

Dos and don’ts for those who started what they couldn’t finish on November 29, 2007 at the Manila Peninsula Hotel

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v1553223SKXzjr5p

1. Don’t stage it from a five-star hotel. It has been done before and it failed miserably. Do it from where it will create a lot more impact. A television station, a military camp, and of course Malacanang are the best bets. Communist rebels still wage their revolution from among their professed constituents of the poor in the countryside. Does Senator Antonio Trillanes IV know who his are? The 11 million voters who voted for him? Come on!

2. Don’t do it before a long weekend. People have already made plans. They don’t need another diversion when they are busy living their own lives or simply eking out a living. And certainly don’t do it close to the holidays. Filipinos live for temporary escapes from life’s hardships. Don’t be a Grinch and rob us of these momentary elusions. Even the most sensational coup attempts waged during this time of year were simply that -- attempts.

3. Don’t just wing it. This is not a stand-up comedy act. Manila Pen was a battle zone and lines were drawn and people could’ve gotten killed. You can’t just escape your armed escorts and proceed with the attitude, “Let’s see who’ll join me and we’ll take it from there.” Have a plan, man.

4. Don’t use spokesmen who would not -- or could not -- explain what the entire exercise is about. Speak plainly. For instance, say, “This is a revolution. We don’t recognize Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as president of the republic. Join us and we’ll kick her out together.” None of the let-the-media-call-it-what-they-want crap. Heck, I wanted to call it a courtroom-hearing escape that turned into a hotel takeover. And please, no wishy-washy we-were-in-the-area-by-chance excuse.

5. Do your homework. Erap getting kicked out of office does not count as an actual overthrow. It did not happen because of strong, massive protests against him. It happened because he was weak and soft. Remember, he stepped down. Marcos’s expulsion took a long, long, long time. It cost a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. And it took a lot of hard work like organizing, propaganda, alliance-building, and mobilizing.

6. Do know thyself. When the dust settled, Senator Panfilo Lacson gifted Senator Antonio Trillanes IV with Sun Tzu’s Art of War. How apt and fitting! Has the once-professional soldier become too much of a politician that he has forgotten this first basic rule of war?

7. Do know thy enemy. Again from the war master; because if the jailed senator and company didn’t know the strengths and weaknesses of their enemy, would they have started what they did in the first place? And then let it hang over their head like a wet rag dripping with mockery? What would have been better? A Faeldon-style escape for Trillanes and Brigadier General Danilo Lim should embarrass the government no end.

8. Do have balls. Be prepared to die. No one spoke it. The devil you dared was small-fry. “We’re prepared for the long haul,” was what one of the spokesmen said. “I even brought clothes.” He got ready for a sleepover. Did you expect a tea party? Even the hotel kitchen closed down because hotel staff also had to leave the hotel.

9. Do study history. The wages of revolution are death and destruction. The wages of the revolution against Marcos are still being paid now -- a full generation hence -- still in death and destruction, in ways both subtle and not. Please address that. Because we won’t have an Erap or even a Gloria if we had done that.

10. Do not be crybabies. This is for all the protagonists in that Pen play -- the mutinous soldiers, their leaders, and their supporters; the media; the government forces, their leaders, and their factotums. Notwithstanding the tear gas, to all of us, it was just, “Trabaho lang ito (All in a day’s work).” The only ones that had the right to cry were the hotel guests, who were unceremoniously evacuated from what should have been a restful holiday, and the Manila Peninsula Hotel, which pulled out of it four days later with what seemed like nary a scratch.

Epilogue:

Pen officials were in Tagaytay for a planning session when they were called back to handle the tragi-comedy that was unfolding in their hotel. At one point, the general manager, who was negotiating for the evacuation of the hotel guests with both Trillanes and Trillanes’s enemies, could only put up his hands in frustration at what was happening to his hotel.

At one time, the gorgeous hotel PR guy was “with all due respecting” a Magdalo official, gently arguing with him about the possibility that there and then Trillanes and company may be the villains. He could be right. A seventy-something woman whose hair was still in curlers was trying to keep her own panic in check, looking for a granddaughter who wanted to get back their deposit. A man on a wheelchair had to wait longer to get himself out of the hotel.

In the middle of all the chaos, the hotel’s general manager scolded a photographer who was standing on top of a chair in the lobby to get a better shot of Trillanes, who has come down from the mezzanine with a mob -- a real bruising mob -- of photographers, reporters, and cameramen with their soundmen and lightmen. “Get down from my chair. Get down from my chair. I am the general manager of this hotel.” At another, he was picking up a cigarette butt near the entrance to lobby, shaking his head with possibly this cartoon balloon over his head, “How can this be happening to me?”

Which is what I was feeling. I was pulled out of a rare one-day leave to cover the sorry episode. I successfully got into the hotel by pretending to be a hotel guest. When I saw that two of the assigned reporters were already there, I was caught between two emotions -- the learned desire to nail a story and my instinctive aversion to pain. At almost four p.m., or an hour after the deadline has lapsed, I finally decided to leave. I tried to get out as a hotel guest and failed. When the Magdalo guards who were blocking the front door with only a thick rope finally gave the go signal, I got out, luckily with minutes to spare before government troops stormed the hotel with tear gas.

I saw and took videos of the SWAT boys and their big playthings and swore not to wear wedges as I ran away from the warning shots I realized were being fired my way. I suffered not the humiliation of being dragged out, hand-cuffed, or “processed.” I am now known -- among friends who were worried after seeing me on TV thumbing my Blackberry inside the hotel -- as “palos,” which I take to mean a slippery eel.

Here and now

I think about how lucky women—you, me, our mothers, our titas, our sisters, our daughters—are to live in this time and place.

red and tan

How lucky we are, not to have to worry about the pasador—the reusable sanitary pad that menstruating women used, washed, sun-dried, ironed, and reused. How lucky today’s mothers are, not to have to have to do the same things for their babies’ diapers. How lucky we are to have been able to go to school and take our pick of courses, learning about the world and its possibilities. How lucky we are to be able to drive a car, watch movies, buy jewelry and real estate—by ourselves, without having to ask money or permission from our fathers, husbands, or boyfriends.

How lucky we are to be here, working outside the home, earning our keep, discovering our potential for goodness and greatness. How lucky we are not to be considered chattel that can be bought or sold or raped, even by our husbands. How lucky we are to be able to vote (even if sometimes it’s slim pickings) and to be able to be voted into office.

We are all so lucky to be enjoying these privileges as rights, when in the past, the standard was for women not to own their lives. We are all so lucky to be expecting these liberties, to have all these choices. We can choose furniture, careers, workplaces, even the men or women who will make our hearts sing.

We are all able make these choices because women before us fought for these rights. Today, March 8, we celebrate International Women’s Day to commemorate the courage and the sacrifices of these women.

Here, in the Philippines, the feminist movement remembers the contributions of Concepcion Felix and Pura Villanueva. More than one hundred years ago, in 1905, these two women founded the feminist movement in the country. Going against the accepted belief of their time, these two women endured indifference, ridicule, and contempt for daring to claim that women were equals of men, and that women deserved the same political and civil rights as men.

Because of them, we are here and now.

stop and start

In a few hours, 2006 will die and 2007 will be born. That is the way of the world. Tonight we celebrate both the death and the birth. We celebrate what we have had for the last 365 days, possibly if they are anything like mine, a good many days that are so-so, days that tumble over each other not so different from the one that just passed -- busy, not-so-busy, lazy, not-so-lazy, sad, not-so-sad, happy, not-so-happy. But the rhythm of those days and nights hums with a desperation for life -- life that is seeking its own fulfillment. And because of family and friends and once in a while strangers, the hunger is satisfied, the thirst is quenched, the weariness goes away. So tonight we give thanks for those past 365 days and welcome the next subset of time, thankful for the togetherness, for the love, for the attention, for the time. Thank you. -- Veronica