THE LEGAL FRONT
My title might look strange to some readers as my listed subjects, on first reading, do not relate to one another. What brings them together, in my own mind, is causality – one subject, once started, unfailingly leads to another, until all three are wrapped up as one understandable whole.
In my legal training, nationalism has been at the periphery of the materials I read and studied. It is touched upon off and on, but is seldom the main topic; it is simply a hovering thought – waiting to be invoked and noticed – about love of one’s country.
From my earliest days, my father has always spoken of how he had served our country, first as a soldier, as a government employee, and later as a judge. His World War II days were always topics for prolonged discussions. His stories about our heroes, based on his readings, were never far behind. Through these stories, he understood nationalism and eagerly imparted its meaning to me.
His off-told tale was the story of our national hero, Jose Rizal, whose Calamba house we even visited. He never tired, too, of relating the stories he read about President Manuel L. Quezon, his choice politician, and about Chief Justice Jose Abad Santos whom the Japanese executed for his refusal to collaborate. There, too, were his stories about the politicians from our family – former San Pablo City Mayor Lauro Dizon (my grandfather), his son and my uncle, former City Mayor Cesar Dizon, and my granduncle, Tomas Dizon, also a former governor, city mayor and the congressman who authored the law making our hometown a city. From these beginnings, the close kinship of politics, public service, and nationalism became an instinctive thought for me.
Covid entered the picture unbidden, as it forced me in 2020 to bring my family back to our home city, to isolate and distance ourselves from Covid’s reach. Isolation was not a problem in the beginning; in fact, I found isolation exciting as it gave me the opportunity to spend time with my dogs and to enjoy the fruit-bearing trees I planted in my younger years. Isolation, from these perspectives, allowed me to feel young again.
But I could only play and frolic so much; at some point, isolation became a prison without walls, that I had to escape. My old and reliable reading materials – my books, newspapers, and the internet with its Google and other online materials – were my best companions and means toward the free ranging thought I longed for. In the process, I discovered (or re-discovered) history as a topic I could fully and fruitfully explore.
At the top of my list are the history books, biographies, and law books that I read and re-read, and whose topics I updated through the internet. With its Google and DuckDuckGo, the internet was likewise an inexhaustible mine of information; almost all my topics of interest were there, ready to be savored and enjoyed. They all became very useful when I started writing my Manila Bulletin columns.
I also found the internet’s YouTube to be a rich vein of documentary and opinion materials; it put Netflix to shame as the latter can only provide canned movies, many of them not at all entertaining, useful, or enjoyable. Viewed through Windows or my Chromebook, YouTube updated me on the developments and trends about my favorite topics – Israel, Ukraine, China, US and local politics, and the US and our own Supreme Court.
Nationalism caught my serious attention when I examined PBBM’s SONA and reflected on his message and intentions. I discovered that the President – through his focused points – has effectively been engaging in nation-building by considering, utilizing, and seeking to improve, in his first year in office, all the elements needed to build and strengthen our nation – the economy, governance, and the welfare of the people.
Other elements, of course, can be added, but these add-ons can be subsumed under the main elements. For example, fighting corruption which PBBM failed to fully focus on, can very well fall under governance. Sovereignty can be part of all the basic elements or can be a separate and stand-alone element because it is foundational.
With all these thoughts settled in my mind, one question still bugged me: how can the government effectively communicate its nation-building efforts and goals to the people so that this information can properly be understood, appreciated, and properly utilized?
My initial answer was through education but on further reflection, I concluded that, by itself and without more, education might not suffice; it needs to be improved through additional focus: on the specifics of our national roots, on who we are as a people, on where we came from, on how we survived and flourished through the years, and on the challenges we have overcome, with all these presented in a clear and understandable narrative ,i.e., as our history.
A further thought opened up as I browsed the internet and saw a tried-and-tested model the country may possibly use. To afford everyone the means and opportunity to fully appreciate our nation, we perhaps need a law along the lines of the Rizal Act of 1956, R.A. 1425, that mandates the compulsory teaching in our schools of the life and works of our hero, Jose P. Rizal. The late senator and nationalist, Claro M. Recto, authored and successfully guided this law through Congress despite serious opposition from many quarters, among them, the Catholic Church.
This realization left me hoping that, in time, we will have another lawmaker with the same caliber, persuasion, and determination as the late Senator Claro M. Recto who can present a much-needed history act to Congress. In the meantime, I hope the writings on history of Ateneo historian Ambeth Ocampo can be given the widest circulation in our country. ([email protected])