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Bacolod City, Philippines Friday, May 4, 2012
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TIGHT ROPE
WITH MODESTO P. SA-ONOY

Sense of loyalty

TIGHT ROPE
WITH MODESTO P. SA-ONOY

Today the Liberal Party in Occidental Negros is set to convene. This is the first time in so many years that an assembly of the Liberals of this size has been called. The party has been emasculated since the declaration of martial law in 1972 and many of its leaders went either into exile or jumped into the martial law political party, the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan.

It is reported that in this new assembly 12 mayors of this province are joining the party though their names, as of the writing of this column, have not been published. We shall know them soon enough when they take their oaths as party members.

The only information available is that they are not from the Nationalist People’s Coalition but they are from the Lakas CMD.

“Take their oath” is rather an ambitious phrase or perhaps an inappropriate term because an oath is a sacred act that invokes the name of God as a witness to one’s pledge of loyalty or promise to do something or refrain from doing something.

The mayors who are expected to jump into the Liberal Party wagon are dismembering the political party of the defeated and now imprisoned leader, charged with crimes that can send her to jail for life and stripped of all her privileges and dignity.

These mayors, surely also took their “oath” when they joined the Lakas which was then the party in power and in position to dispense with funds for their election. Now they are abandoning their party and forgetting their oaths to cash in, yes literally cash in, on the new power center and dispenser of political goods.

This is the tragedy of our political system, the absence of party loyalty and the hypocrisy in the taking of the oath. It is not a matter of whether the oath is taken with God as the witness or merely a pledge of one’s honor, the fact that one raises his hand in a public pledge of allegiance to a political party is itself an act that measures the sincerity and credibility of a person.

The Nazis of Germany took their oath seriously although they pledged loyalty without invoking a Supreme Being or a higher power. What is their guarantee of that loyalty? They declare, “My word is my bond.”

This oath is inscribed in their dagger and if ever they violated their oath, it was incumbent on them to take their lives with that same dagger.

The Spaniards has the same pledge, “palabra de honor” which we have in earlier days and considered a sacred bond, the unwritten personal contract to do or refrain from what is agreed upon.

Our own native language, Hiligaynon has a counterpart pledge based mainly on one’s word, “sumpa”. It would be a social and personal tragedy for a man to be called “wala hinambalan”, without word of honor (palabra de honor) and then labeled as “wala huya (shameless)!”

It is to our everlasting shame as a society that some present generation politicians reject as financially unsound and politically suicidal to abide by the word of honor.

And so we view the oath-taking as a mere show, an insincere act with the intent of merely getting to the wagon with the most goodies.

Of course there are a few people who just joined the Liberal Party, the non-politicians who now put on the clothes of partisan politics. They are new and therefore have no previous loyalty to discard, but I wonder how long they will stay in the Liberal Party when President Aquino steps down from power and a new party takes over.

This situation is the result of the absence of clear-cut political ideology and so the rule today is getting elected in whichever machinery one can get into. There was a time when the distinction between Liberals and Nacionalistas was clear, later blurred; today there is none, only survival.

The dismantling of political parties to serve what Ferdinand Marcos called “New Society” is his legacy. But even before that, Senate President Eulogio Rodriguez already laid down the foundation of this principle that debased the political system.

Amang Rodriguez said and this guiding principle remains today, “politics is addition.”

It no longer matters what a political party stands for; what only matters is getting as many people as possible, scalawags and scoundrels included, into the party.

Thus we find the same people jumping from one party to another without any qualms about what the party stands for or the oath they took.

The result is a hodgepodge political grouping, bereft of political principles and sense of loyalty until the next opportunity. Jumping from one wagon to another is no longer surprising but expected, leaving the electorates a choice among personalities or the highest bidder for votes on Election Day.*

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