I wish to recall Rizal's "Indolence of the Filipino." In short, our national hero attributed that phenomenon to the manner our former colonizers -- with the combined sword and crucifix -- governed our forefathers.
The prevailing conditions in our country, in the way our erstwhile leaders tried to govern us clearly indicate that we have not yet become truly independent, for over half a century now, notwithstanding repeated outpourings of enthusiasm every year since July 4, 1946; which was changed to June 12 by then President Diosdado Macapagal.
If our nation's leaders could only be guided by the admonitions by Bro. Dr. Jose Rizal, particularly in the Seventh Chapter of El Filibusterismo, especifically in the matter of language, our nation could hope to be brought up from the cultual quagmire that we are deeply enmeshed.
Our government's obstinacy in perpetuating the use of English in public administration and in the educational system has kept our society groveling in the quicksand of American contagion. Government leaders are blinded by the Washington propaganda that English language is the most desirable for us. It simply keeps us captive to the IMF-World Bank policy of ensuring the unhampered supply of cheap Filipino labor force to feed the needs of multinationals here and abroad. In effect, the policy perpetuates the pathetic condition of keeping the OFWs menial workers in the employ of other nations/races.
We ought to be mindful, and guided by, the exhortations by our national hero -- Dr. Jose Rizal -- that "language is the thought of the peoples".
History clearly shows that progressive countries educate their young in their native language.
When the USA colonized our country through the so-called "benevolent assimilation proclamation" by President McKinley and enforced the teaching of English to children of school age -- with the attendant prohibiition for us to speak our own languages -- it was in effect the altruistic conquest of the Filipino mind.
The more intelligent were taken in as government's "state pensionados" to pursue studies in the USA, and upon return to the home country, became the implementors of the Washington policy of keeping the Philippines an economic and cultural vasal of the USA. President Quezon started to wiggle out from the quicksand of US cultural contagion when he created the Institute of National Language, and proclaimed August 13 - 19 yearly as National Language Week. He merely floated a toy paper boat in the lake of Americanized culture.
President Ramon Magsaysay ordered the translation of Philippine National Anthen into, Bayang Magiliw or "Lupang Hinirang"; and also the military commands into Filipino. Moreover, he instituted the practice of delivering in the native language his formal acceptance speech whenever a new ambassador presented his credentials as the envoy of his sovereign to the Philippines. But the "Guy" perished in a mysterious plane crash on March 17, 1957; in what the US-AID proclaimned as caused by metal fatigue!
When President Corazon Aquino certified to Congress the urgency of creating the National Language Commission, and she also issued Executive Order No. 335 ordering the use of Filipino in official correspondence, she was hounded by a series of coup d'etat(s), and there was a stern CIA warning that she would not last her term. Significantly, a lady lawmaker from Cebu, possibly by means of external proddings, demanded in her privilege speech that Tita Cory withdrew her EO 335!
The National Language Commission was established, nevertheless, but it was allotted only six-hundredths (0.06%) percent of the Dept. of Education budget, which rendered it inutile! There came about perhaps a secret understanding with the rank and file implementors of the order. Tita Cory survived her term.
On July 15, 1997 President Fidel V. Ramos proclaimed August as national language month every year (Proc. 1041), but it was like the curse of Sisyphus -- pushing uphill the national language policy for one month, and then letting it slide down back to the plains for eleven months -- "for global competitiveness!" And so, our official language policy has remained -- urung-sulong -- or back-and-forth!
But the most serious blow was when the CIA with the US marines, abducted President Marcos (et. al) to Hawaii and detained him (them) there until death. Marcos had issued an order -- a Memorandum to the Minister of Education and Culture, and all other members of the Cabinet, dated 17 January 1986 -- or just over a month before EDSA One erupted -- "To create the conditions in your respective ministries and other instrumentalities of the government for the optimal promotion and development of Fiipino as a national language.
"Further the Minister of the Budget is directed to cooperate with the University of the Philippines in realizing the endowment of a Translation Center for the translation of major literary works into Filipino..."
The memorandum was officially transmitted on 20 Janaury 1986 through a covering memorandum by Presidential Executive Assistant Juan C. Tuvera, to Minister Jaime C. Laya and others concerned. It is highly suspected that the vital directive might, or not, have reached its intended addressees, and/or probably intercepted by CIA surrogates in the government bureaucracy.
To the Washington policy makers such audacity by a former Asian spokesman who, 20 years earlier, held the joint session of the US Congress spellbound when he delivered in excellent English, "An Asian Message to America -- Trustee of Civilization," was an act of sacrilege, a fatal error, if not a direct affront to the "IMF policy of insuring that English should remain as the Philippine language of administration and for instruction in the Filipino classrooms," according to Dean Apolinar B. Parale in his book, A Case for Filipino.
It is very necessary for Congress to enact a law declaring Visayan and Ilocano as ALSO official languages of the country, and that after a certain period of time English shall cease to be an official language, and become, as other major languages of the world, an elective language of study in the schools.
It would be also necessary for Filipino journalists and owners of the local periodicals to rethink their language policy, if they still value the meaning of patriotism, or love of Motherland. And this writer hereby appeals to the good reader to kindly visit -- http://www.Petition Online.com/maBIni2 click this address, and just follow the prompts to endorse the Petition pending in Congress for the rationalization of our governments policy on language.
Even the owners/publishers of Philippine news and periodicals should rethink their language policy. If they are not renegades to the Motherland!
Irineo Perez Goce
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