The Philippine Online Chronicles

January 30 to May 10, 2010. Only one hundred days to go before the National Elections. One hundred days are not a long time. They will be over before we realize it. We will all be busy, and in the hassle overlook the fact that many things big and small are happening around us.

We live in a basketball-influenced culture where a lot of things are done during the “last two minutes.” Life is not a basketball game which is played and done today and not tomorrow. It is not seasonal like the PBA, but a constant, daily reality. A serious part of our lives is Politics. Whether we like it or not, politics affects us. Our leaders affect us for better or for worse. The LAST ONE HUNDRED DAYS to the Presidential Elections are crucial. Each single day is crucial and important. We cannot allow any day to pass without doing something. If there are one hundred days, there are also at least one hundred ways of spending these days wisely and effectively.

January 30 to May 10, 2010. Only one hundred days to go before the National Elections. One hundred days are not a long time. They will be over before we realize it. We will all be busy, and in the hassle overlook the fact that many things big and small are happening around us.

We live in a basketball-influenced culture where a lot of things are done during the “last two minutes.” Life is not a basketball game which is played and done today and not tomorrow. It is not seasonal like the PBA, but a constant, daily reality. A serious part of our lives is Politics. Whether we like it or not, politics affects us. Our leaders affect us for better or for worse. The LAST ONE HUNDRED DAYS to the Presidential Elections are crucial. Each single day is crucial and important. We cannot allow any day to pass without doing something. If there are one hundred days, there are also at least one hundred ways of spending these days wisely and effectively.

Who will win in the coming elections is not what is at stake. The kind of nation we will have - whether healed or more hurt, whole or more broken, united or more divided, prosperous or poorer, peaceful or more violent - this is what is at stake. The May 10, 2010 Election is about Nation Building. It is not only about candidates and campaign strategies, or platforms and promises. It is not about individual candidates and parties. It is about us Filipinos, our country, our Nation.

Listening to candidates on TV and Radio and reading their ads on newspapers make us ask who among them will help us rebuild our broken nation. Who among them will restore our National Dignity (Pambansang Dangal)? Elections are clearly not only about candidates. It is clearly about the electorate. Do both candidates and electorate understand, appreciate, and cherish their personal dignity as well as our collective or national dignity as a people, as a nation? Or is dignity such a muddled and trivialized concept, spread like cheap butter on the stale bread of Philippine politics?

We have One Hundred Days and One Hundred Ways to address the blight of Philippine politics characterized by the following: 1) Dirty money; 2) Popularity driven; 3) Violence, warlordism, private armies, militarization, revolutionary taxation; 4) Abuse and commercialization of Nature; 5) Cheating and dishonesty; 6) Propaganda and blatant lying; 7) The political butterfly or Balimbing; 8) Arrogance: no repentance, no change; 9) The use and abuse of religion and religious leaders; 10) Deluded Messianism, thinking that one is absolutely necessary for the good of the nation and should therefore indefinitely stay in power; and 11) The uncertainty of automated elections.

Let us not let a day pass without praying, reflecting and discerning, carefully looking at the “signs of the times” through which God speaks and guides us back to our personal and collective dignity. In the next one hundred days, let us learn to ask the right questions and beyond just thinking of answers, do and engage in something individually and collectively: Question and Action, Ask and Act, and Tanong-Gawa. Daily Questions and Actions will be posted on parokyasaweb.org.

Isang Daan Na Lang will be launched tomorrow, January 30, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. at the COMELEC, Intramuros. Before we run to Mendiola, one hundred candles will be lit at COMELEC and prayers will be said for the nation.

Fr. Roberto P. Reyes
Kubol Pagasa
January 29, 2010

Photo: “112409_3rb” by , c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved.