Desperate for change: An anti-corruption protest in Manila last month. — Agencies
“NOTHING is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom,” argued Alexis de Tocqueville in his magisterial overview of democratic politics almost two centuries ago. The greatest tragedy of our democracy is its genesis: it was bestowed upon us by a retreating coloniser (the United States) rather than directly earned by our collective struggle.
This is precisely why there is a yawning gap between what Jose Rizal’s great generation had in mind for an independent Philippines, on one hand, and the progressively corrosive form of oligarchic politics that has colonised our nation, on the other.
