It's been a while since I last posted. Welcome back to me, thank you. I've been away (at least from this blog) for a long three months, and I feel so much has happened and I can't begin to tell the world what has become of me.
Three Deaths
I mourne the deaths of my two surrogate fathers and my grandma. Who I considered two of my surrogate fathers were Doc Prudente and Ka Bel. Doc Prudente was the PUP president when I became active as a student council officer (1990-1992). Doc Prudente was a passionate father to the students of PUP who came from the basic sectors of our society. He fought hard for a bigger budget for the university with around 50,ooo students. His brilliance rose even higher when he established the Open University when everybody else were doing researches about distant education, extending the boundaries of affordable quality higher education to far flung provinces. Even as two ambush attempts didn't stop him from pursuing his humane causes. He was riddled with bullets and false communist accusations just to deny his lofty aspirations for the masses.
When he retired from the academe, Doc Prudente ran for the Senate in the hope to bring genuine reforms and put an end to traditional politics, together with presidential and vice-presidential candidates Jovito Salonga and Nene Pimentel, respectively. It was to be a dream ticket, the Liberal Party, composed of such great men and women as nationalists Bobby Tañada, and Vic Ziga. But indeed, Philippine politics is ruled by the power of guns, goons and gold so that they the cash-starved party lagged way behind the predictable traditional, rich politicians. I cannot forget the humbling campaigns we had in Bicol. While the other parties owned private jets to take their candidates to more places, we've seen Doc in barong shuttled in a fish truck to transport him from Camarines Sur to Albay. I still cry when I rember it happened. It was ironic for his stature as a well-esteemed academician, but the scene surely captured the kind of politics that he was courting. Doc's was a life well-lived, a life he offered to uplift the lives of the others.
A kibitz called Ka Crispin Beltran's death as boring. He must have expected Ka Bel dying in the street of the fascist regime, riddled with bullets, with clinched fists, and shouting for social justice. Or perhaps his body found in parts, his brain taken out for rags and cottons - as gory as the death of Juan Escandor's under the brutal hands of the martial law berdugos. Or maybe, simply gunned down afresh from the halls of Congress.
Ka Bel's life was far from being boring, what with his every vein pulsating to the call of proletarian emancipation, his nerves pounding to the harp of his land's complete freedom from tyranny and imperialism. His demise, an ironic decrescendo of a life offered to a just revolution.
[can't finish this without being too emotional. i'll be back.]
Ka Bel's life was an open book; it was a self-less life offered to proletarian liberation and social transformation.
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