Let’s reclaim our inspiring history

Philippine Daily Inquirer (Makati)

“When were we Filipinos last truly proud?” Speaking for myself, says Oscar Franklin Tan, it was probably around 2009, when boxing legend Manny Pacquiao took his sixth and seventh world titles. “Growing up hearing foreigners’ jokes about Imelda Marcos’s shoe collection, I revelled in the sense of national dignity Pacquiao restored.” Now, alas, he’s “just another politician”, who has thrown his support behind our autocratic president, Rodrigo Duterte. How sad it should come to this. When our People Power revolution of 1986 overthrew decades of dictatorship by Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippines “stood as a beacon of democracy to the entire world”. Three years before the massacre in Tiananmen Square, we “stood in the streets and stopped tanks”, and our protests were hailed as an example of the possible. Yet some 30 years later, the anniversary of that uprising has become no more than an occasion for “bitter old men to harangue youth on how they do not know history”. Nobody wears yellow, the colour of the revolution. Filipinos are “heirs to Asia’s greatest democratic legacy”. We desperately need to “reappropriate” this inspiring part of our history.