YOU FIGHT for what is Right (Part 1)

On August 8, 1988, a group of young, idealistic and highly patriotic officers and men from the uniformed services met secretly and decided to discuss the future of our country. These officers, who later named themselves as the Young Officers Union, were largely credited for the people's experiment we now know as EDSA revolution. That 1988 founding was actually a full ripening of ideals and aspirations these young officers held when they joined the first RAM meeting on February 6, 1985. That veritable Munich Putsch-like event brought us a new generation of officers who bear the right ideological direction for the New Philippine Revolution.

So many articles and books have been written about the YOU that I decided not to contribute anymore about their history. It is more relevant for my readers to know their causes and their ideological moorings. Yes, it is important to know that the YOU was founded by PMA class 1981 top awardee Diosdado Valeroso with his classmates and with others in the uniformed services. But, I think the more important question is why these men went out of their comfort zones and decided to bond together to fight for their country.

A conversation (among many) that I had with its ideological founder actually triggered me to write this entry. We had the same longing to share this cause to the new generation of officers and Filipinos who love their country and are looking for solutions to our societal problems. Like in 1985, when these officers held their first discussion groups, the same situation exists today. People are asking what ails this beautiful country of 80 million Filipinos? Why, despite our rich heritage, our bountiful natural resources and our patient and hard-working people we are still in a rut?

For these officers, the system remains the root cause of our present problems. We have an unjust system, which rewards the Strong and punishes the weak. It is a system incapable of rewarding honesty and good service and instead, promotes corruption and immorality in service.

It is also a system that promotes a humongous bureaucracy like a big lice that feeds on the public coffers. The parasitic nature of this system is what dissipates the entire energies of the People and puts in jeopardy all reforms or ideas of reforms in all aspects of governmental or societal life.

Truly, reform is not the answer to our society's problems. It is the total eradication of this decrepit system. It is a total and drastic overhauling of the superstructure that is the cure. We need a surgical operation, one that would jolt the elite ranks and make them pee and shit in their pants.

Those were the thoughts of these young officers back in 1988, and these same thoughts, feelings and analysis are being shared by many, not just those people in the uniformed services but also within and among civilian chat circles.

The same conditions that prodded these young officers back then are the same ones that exist today. If the system remains the problem, then, the most obvious answer is simply effect the same solution which, to my mind and those who think along similar lines, is basically a revolution.

We need a dramatic paradigm shift, something that only a revolt could bring to rouse us from our cynicism and pessimism. The old line that the YOU thought then is still applicable today. The mode of struggle, which is a coup-cum-revolution, remains the most viable solution to our present problem. Why?

A coup cum revolution is still the right strategy given that the entire representation or symbolic center of power lies still in Metro Manila. It is simply a trigger that allows the injection of revolutionary elements within the system that leads to its ultimate destruction. You cannot do it with a protracted people's war, no. You need a situation similar to the 1958 Cuban Revolution, which attacked the center from the outside, subvert it and overhaul the entire system.(read part 2)