A special exhibition of documentarist Ramona Diaz’s And So It Begins has been a double treat: there was, first, the showing of film itself, and after that a discussion of the sociopolitical issues that underlay it. One came away not only with a clearer sense of the nation’s troubles, but also well advised as to what to do — that is, if one were inclined to do anything at all.
The film chronicles Leni Robredo’s presidential campaign and also picks up where Diaz left off with her earlier A Thousand Cuts, which records Rappler founder and CEO Maria Ressa’s persecution under Rodrigo Duterte’s regime, the price for Rappler’s boldly independent journalism. “And so it begins” rounds out that chapter of her life with her Nobel Peace Prize (2021), and merges the two films’ complementary subjects under one theme.”
It ends showing a volunteer campaigner for Robredo beside himself over her defeat to an obscene rival — Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the late dictator’s son. Through tearful gasps, her champion laments, “Oh, how hard it is to love this country!”
That scene would have served as a neat illustration of the film’s gloomy provisional title — “This is how it ends.” The final title turns it around into a hopeful battle cry, and it seems to me to work. The nation can certainly use some inspiring and cheering up, and the crowds that came to Robredo’s rallies, on their own individual or communal initiative, neither paid nor herded, rivaling in both size and fervor the crowd at EDSA, which booted the Marcoses out of power into foreign exile, in 1986, showed a comparable potential.
Indeed, it would be hard to have anything to do with countrymen who bestowed blind craven sick love upon the heir to the dictator. And to think they constituted a clear majority, swamping Robredo voters two-to-one! That is, of course, if you could believe the chief election referee, who happens to have been once Ferdinand Jr.’s own hireling, the lawyer he engaged when he tried, unsuccessfully, to overturn the vote that had gone Robredo’s way the previous time they ran against each other, for the vice-presidency, in 2016.
In any case, I try to be activist but realistic, rather than emotional, about Robredo’s presidential defeat. I try more to do battle than to merely raise a cry. I prefer to focus on the 15 million votes conceded to Robredo, out of a total of 55.5 million. Even out of a population of 115.6 million (2022), 15 million voters should be enough to make a viable political force, and a deployment of 10%, or even fewer, from that number, such as seen on the streets for Robredo, should be enough to make a critical mass that can be harnessed for energy to ignite a reformist chain reaction.
And, to that end, “an alternative constituency” might be one option worth exploring — reorganizing for its purpose those Robredo volunteers, who, refusing to allow their electoral defeat to affect their better nature, continue to deploy themselves for civic duty, mostly for aid and rescue during emergencies. I have in fact written about that here a few times, most recently and extensively only last July 13 (READ: [Newspoint] A fighting presence).
It’s not even a work, but a mere idea, in progress, and, coming away from the exhibition of And So It Begins I did feel some good progress made: I picked up a most critical component for my alternative constituency listening to Maria Ressa.
With Rappler or on her own, Maria has been at the forefront of the battle against falsehoods on social media. There’s just no escaping that battleground, she told the forum, and urged that every piece of falsehood flung at anyone not be left un-countered with truth.
With the easy and random availability of modern-day tools, nay weapons, of communications technology, falsehood has indeed acquired the capability to compete for currency with truth. In fact, given the nature of falsehood, as a concoction intended to be dramatic and arresting, an overkill, truth is bound to be overwhelmed and its champion put on the defensive. We in the news media, who are supposed to form the first line of defense for truth and against falsehood, seem ourselves falling short of our frontline duty and our collective potential by fighting separately, as if we did not face a common enemy and were not being attacked as a common target.
Reduced to its common denominator, the enemy is the power structure itself, which has built a fortress of falsehoods, on social media chiefly, for its own entrenchment and advancement. The President’s own family’s effort to distort, if not outright falsify, its history of torture, murder, and plunder during the martial-law presidency of its patriarch is a long-running, obvious case.
Falsehood, as you can see, is no abstract enemy, but a movement of human deviants, of real people who worship the god of falsehood for power and money. However we decide to deal with it, we just have to do it together; the enemy is simply too big, too rich in resources, and too malign-minded to be allowed to divide us.
So, how about beginning with an alternative constituency with its own truth network? – Rappler.com