Cardema, Manuel and Rizal

I just read a Facebook post that brought back to my mind the inspiringly nationalistic poem of Dr. Jose Rizal, entitled A LA JUVENTUD FILIPINA. In 1879, our national hero, while studying at University of Santo Tomas, addressed the Filipino youth as “bella esperanza de la patria mia.” Other poets and linguists have translated this line to the more understandable English as our youths being the “fair hope of the fatherland.”

The FB post carried two distinct faces of the Filipino youth. What was posted looked political and it appeared to be composed by some minds opposed to the present administration. The young people in the social media posting are probably the youth Rizal referred to in his poem because they hold high positions in government and should be the fair hope of the fatherland. They are Representatives Drixie Mar Cardema and Raoul Manuel, both members of the House of Representatives. Their faces are placed side by side as if to show a comparison. The point of the comparison is the number of bills, reckoned from August 2022, filed by Cardema as the administration lawmaker and by Manuel as the legislator coming from the opposition.

According to the FB post, only one bill was filed by Youth Representative Cardema of the Partylist Duterte Youth and this is House Bill No 1253. What is this proposed law about? Cardema wants to rename the Ninoy Aquino International Airport as the Manila International Airport. It must be in the congresswoman’s mind that we need to erase that part of our history when Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., was assassinated at the tarmac of the airport during the regime of the late Pres Ferdinand E Marcos, the incumbent president’s name sake.

Rep. Raoul Manuel, on the other hand, had (again as of August 2022) filed ten bills. These proposed measures, as listed in the FB post, are: (1) HB 251 Safe School Reopening Bill; (2) HB 252 Emergency Student Aid and Relief Bill; (3) HB 253 Repeal Terror Law Bill; (4) HB 254 Academic Freedom Bill; (5) HB 255 Critical Media Literacy Bill; (6) HB 257 Students’ Rights Bill; (7) HB 258 Super Rich Tax Bill; (8) HB 259 People’s Mining Bill; (9) HB 260 National Filipino Youth Museum Bill; and (10) HB 2546 Human Rights Defenders Protection Bill.

Both Cardema and Manuel must have heeded the call of Rizal’s “alza tu terza frente, juventud filipina en este dia” (roughly: hold high thy brow serene, Filipino youth of today). The nature, substance and depth of their proposed legislations provide us a glimpse into the kind of their response to Rizal’s challenge. We do not condemn Cardema’s trivializing the significance of Ninoy Aquino’s assassination in Philippine history. That is the immediate effect of her bill, if, as expected, it passes congress. As a Duterte Youth representative, she just wants to remove any trace of the brutality of the senator’s murder much like the way the former Duterte administration never gave a hoot to the lives of the reported 30,000 plus victims of extrajudicial killings.

I happen to see a part of the video footage of the congressional budget hearing. The interpellation done by Manuel on Partylist Congressman Erwin Tulfo showed the genius of Manuel’s Summa Cum Laude mind. Oh what an embarrassing scene it was when Tulfo’s booming voice faltered under the weight of the youthful congressman’s intellectual questioning. Now and then, Tulfo had to wait for the whispers of his crew for answers. To me, it was Manuel’s way of responding to Rizal’s “su mente virgen al glorioso asierto” (raise the eager mind to higher station, from a translation I read).

It is my personal opinion that if Dr. Jose Rizal were here with us today he would applaud Representative Raoul Manuel. end