Cubao Postcard #1 - The Filipino Is Worth Buying For

Three days after the 24^th-year celebration of the Edsa People Power Revolution – on the eve of the actual date, historically speaking – Noynoy and Mar staged their own commemoration rally in Cubao’s Araneta Coliseum. The tandem deliberately avoided EDSA due to the incumbent administration’s territorial pissing around the historical event’s true sites of significance, historically speaking. For example, Arroyo’s fostering of the Culture of Convenience dictates that holidays traditional and historical could be rescheduled at will, to ease the tick and tock of the gears of labor, lest 92% of the nation become too unproductive while it ponders which mall’s air-conditioned comfort it might possibly enjoy even as the remaining 8% doesn’t even know what year it is right now.

In its speeches and slogans, the Noynoy-Mar rally was repeatedly proclaimed as "our Edsa," and the show of benign force pouring towards Cubao, by default, "our People Power." One can easily read through the pronouncement’s "Us" vs "Them" polarity as "us" = people in Cubao, "them" = people in Ortigas, or the more pointed "us" = for Noynoy and Mar, "them”= for "Arroyo’s Secret Candidate" Villar, or the more romantic "us" = for change, "them" = for status quo. This is the first I’ve heard Noynoy and Mar actively strut their own historical significance even if auspicious in its dependence on parental associations and auspicious also on the site of its claiming.

But what does it actually mean, People Power? What sort of Power? Bestowed upon whose People? Even a casually critical glance at the pertinent parts of our history exposes the reality of the situation: meaning is defined by the people in power; definitions are never definite from one point in time to another; definitions are only definite as the situation permits; the situation is defined by the people in power; we are never the people in power.

In short: Edsa 3 is not Edsa 2 is not Edsa 1 – and all three are certainly not the Araneta Edsa, and vice versa. Never mind that Noynoy’s presence wants us to equate "our Edsa" to his parents’ Edsa with all its historical and cultural associations, effectively reducing it to a trademark. Look, its logo is a yellow ribbon-dove, representing blind hope, or as the Noynoy-Mar metal yellow ribbon pin’s copy – available in National Bookstore – declares in its packaging, a desire for change. It is on car windows and t-shirts and on driveway gates and on tarps hanging from office buildings as stickers and pins and buttons and patches normally flanked by solarised portraits of Ninoy and Cory, the black on yellow design self-consciously mimicking the famous Che Guevara icon in an effort to associate itself to the Argentine’s relevant pop culture revolutionary stature. This, in complete ignorance of the fact that aside from being a doctor and philosopher, Guevara was also a mercenary and a murderer, the prereqs of being a poster child of Fidel Castro’s revolution, but of course, that is not the point.

The point is the Packaging, the Copy, the Jingle, the Brand Recognition – the point is the Product that needs to be Sold, and no better place for that than Cubao, where it is certainly our Edsa, certainly our People Power: the People’s Power to Purchase, to celebrate the Filipino people’s freedom to buy from the malls by that little strip of Edsa, but only if we have the money for it.

So what do these words really mean – People Power? Edsa? Freedom? Change? – if all they are are political versions of pH balances and lycopene content and slimming properties and expiration dates? What do these words really mean emblazoned on shirts worn and placards carried and stickers stuck and flyers handed out by the throngs of marchers that converged at Araneta Coliseum to watch a political rally the politicians wanted to call a "concert?"

Despite its idealistic socially-transformative foundation, our nation’s politics – from Aguinaldo to Arroyo – has always been about Selling and Spectacle and Extending One’s Comfort Above Everyone Else’s. In this light, the Noynoy-Mar Cubao Miting de Abanse in advance not only makes sense but is also very contemporary and very much within expectations of a brother and a husband of prominent TV personalities and products of political dynasties. And thus a soundbitey pronouncement in a politically-motivated event authorially declared to be devoid of political meaning is actually very pregnant of such. More than just being pregnant, the declaration resonates as being orchestratedly so, coming from people who originally declared themselves as the farthest things from traditional politicians with such sneakily heartfelt honesty that only comes back to bite them on the ass when they make elementary semiotic and linguistic mistakes that only cheapen the spirit of what they choose to stand for. But are they even mistakes?

Being at the point in history where the sites move with the dates as convenience ousts significance from our calendars and our minds and words cannot always mean what they were authorially meant to mean, this seeming significance gleaned from seeming meaninglessness should also be equally transitory and temporary – meaning has no meaning – cold comfort for a nation still grasping for a workable definition of the word.

Photo: 'Araneta Coliseum' from flickr.com.

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