On Ukraine, EDSA, and the cost of freedom  

It has been an eventful week, both in Cebu and in global affairs. The Robredo-Pangilinan campaign sortie here was met by many supporters in Talisay, Toledo, Argao, and Cebu City, with reportedly at least 10,000 people gathered at the Southwestern University-Phinma High School grounds, enough to fill the open-air venue.

I already had an idea of the warm welcome Cebuanos had in store for Vice President Leni Robredo for her first grand rally here. Private chat groups online among volunteers had been buzzing with plans for the grand rally since last week. In a dinner with friends to celebrate my birthday earlier this week, politics, which is usually off the table in such gatherings, had to be thrown in the conversation as well. Two friends even showed up with gifts of pink shirts and pink ballers.

This week, the country also commemorated the 36th anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution. I was 10 years old when People Power happened. My Papa was among the thousands of Cebuanos who went to Fuente Osmeña to attend the rally against Marcos 36 years ago this week.

Today, we are fighting another kind of battle. It is the battle against online disinformation that is spreading a bright but false narrative of the Ferdinand Marcos Sr. years. The disinformation campaign is now benefitting Marcos Jr.’s presidential ambition. Marcos Sr., a graduate of UP and a Bar topnotcher, turned from a promising young leader in 1965 to an ageing dictator in the 1980’s, notorious for his greed for power and wealth. Taking advantage of Martial Law, Marcos Sr. put his trusty but incompetent friends in charge of vital industries in the country. Such incompetence and greed ran the economy to the ground and bankrupted the entire country.

That’s why my Papa, who might not be a victim of martial law but was the breadwinner of a family with six of us children he struggled to keep in good private schools that time, has had enough that day in 1986.

In global affairs, we already know by now the extent of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces on the orders of an ageing and paranoid dictator, Vladimir Putin. The Western democratic alliance, in response, have unleashed sweeping sanctions on Russia. Those of us in the sidelines watching these events unfold can only join Pope Francis in his prayer for peace. The Pope declared March 2, Ash Wednesday, a day of Fasting for Peace. “I pray that all parties involved refrain from any action that would cause even more suffering to the people, destabilizing coexistence between nations and bringing international law into disrepute,” the Pope said in his urgent appeal for prayer and fasting for Ukraine.

While Pope Francis calls for prayers, the events of this week, on the other hand, serve as a reminder that peace and freedom together do not come cheap. There are times they have to be defended with great human sacrifice. The Ukrainian people now have to make that sacrifice of resisting the forces of a despotic Russian leader who has been spinning a revisionist (and false) tale that Ukraine is a creation of Russia and has no historical claim to independent statehood.

In 2012, then pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine thought that a weaker military was just fine for the country despite the fact that it shares a border with a bigger, nuclear-armed neighbor and has no formal alliance with the West like NATO. Yanukovych even argued that Russia was a close friend “who could provide security if the need arose.”

Today, fate has come to collect the steep price of freedom. I think the lesson to be learned here is that it is human nature that when people see you as weak, they will ultimately make decisions for you. In the extreme, it’s the weak who are always bullied. I once ran toward my elder sister for help against this bully of a schoolmate in Grade 2. Instead of coming to my defense, my sister told me point blank, “What are you doing? Fight back!” So I fought back and the bully got the message; he and I eventually became friends.

People may choose to have peace with a tyrant on the latter’s own terms. Others may seek to butter up a bully. Yet bravery is contagious, and spine and nerve are necessary for freedom to survive, and for society to succeed and prosper.