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| Residents of Maragondon on strike after two civil leaders were detained |
The nation recently celebrated the 28th anniversary of the People Power Revolution, and its memory was being recalled in the streets of Maragondon, that morning as I was readying to bike up to Mt. Nagpatong. It was quite a curious thing, how people know were reminding the government of who they are, shouting out to the people in the offices of the town mayor just meters away and they were crying out how they, like in the times of President Marcos, were still being persecuted by the wealth and powerful men that managed to latch on to the wells of influence.
"We are being forced by this government to be NPAs. The government is the one that makes NPAs! People with No Permanent Address!" shouted one of the civil leaders, calling the people to rise up and rattle the walls of the city hall. They were being forced out of their homes, to relocate from the places where they earn a living for the sake of a resort. Two men, people who once served as leaders for the people, were arrested, apparently for no real reason. They were illegally detained.
And now the question being asked now is, what power? What power does the people have?
Technically speaking, the nation is commemorating the day a coup overturned the national government and left it in the shambles that it is now. Just like the coup staged by Emilio Aguinaldo. He crafted a plan by which they would be the big shots of the Republic, overthrowing and killing the man who deserves to be called the First President, Supremo Pangulo Andres Bonifacio. We still live in the echoes of the past, forever repeating our mistakes like a broken vinyl.
May real democracy haunt us. Now.
