Independence Day thoughts from an Indio down Under

As I was watching TV5's Storycon news program, Regina Lay, asks a famous question every June 12, "Tunay nga ba tayong malaya?" [Are we truly free?]

Living in Sydney, one quickly gets used to things just working. The trains arrive on time, the bureaucracy is an invisible utility rather than an endurance sport, and public spaces do not demand a toll from your dignity. It is a comfortable life, yet comfort has a strange way of sharpening the edges of exile. Over the past few weeks, being a Filipino has been a slow-motion wreck. Between the clownery of the Senate, systemic corruption scandals, and the Mindanao earthquake, the Filipino carries a heavy tax on the spirit.

Whenever I meet Pinoy peers over coffee or meals, the conversation invariably turns into an exercise in trauma bonding. We laugh about the absurdity of what we endure back home, but beneath the humor lies a grim realization: so many of our daily struggles in the Philippines are entirely artificial. We have normalized unnecessary difficulties, mistaking survival mechanics for national character. Historically, distance has catalyzed the formation of the Filipino identity; it was in Europe that Rizal and the ilustrados truly saw the Philippines they had left behind. I guess this is no different.

You realize that a functioning society is not a luxury; it is a baseline we have been systematically denied.

Recently, I was toying with friends over the spectacular cringe of a song to return a former president from the International Criminal Court to the Philippines [1]. Then, a friend sent me a video of a remastered version of "Rosas"  [Rose], the anthem of what 2022 meant [2].

The 2022 presidential campaign felt less like an election cycle and more like a collective awakening. For a brief, incandescent moment, a movement for good governance broke through the crust of cynical politics. My mind recalls the exhaustion and excitement of that period: organizing local rallies, house-to-house campaigns, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder in massive rallies that transformed city streets into joyful fiestas. At those mega-rallies, the sound systems were often so overwhelmed that you could barely hear the speeches. But people did not stay away; we stood there simply to be counted, to prove that an alternative baseline existed. It was a melting pot of raw human emotion: the joy of radical solidarity, the drama of familial rifts, tears of exhaustion, anger at systemic disinformation, and an undercurrent of fear. Yet, dominating it all was an uncharacteristic, stubborn hope for "radikal na pagmamahal" [radical love].

The pink movement (photo from NBC news)

Historically, Filipinos have a dangerous appetite for messiahs—we look for single heroes to redeem us, a habit that eventually leaves us vulnerable to authoritarianism [3]. As Rosas played, in my mind, the imagery of the then-presidential candidate Leni Robredo began to blur. Good—because 2022 was never about a single person; it was about demanding a predictable, accountable system. It was the moment the collective consciousness understood the weight of the phrase: "Ang nagmamahal, kailangang ipaglaban ang minamahal [4]" [The one who loves must fight for the one they love].

Naturally, within my circles, there is a fierce, protective consensus that we cannot afford another Duterte in power. The damage inflicted on institutional checks and balances is too fresh, the rhetoric too destructive. However, we must extend that critique further.

Preventing the return of a specific political dynasty is a band-aid solution if we remain blind to the structural conditions that allowed them to rise.

As political scientist Leloy Claudio observed, the real enemy is not just the individual dictator, but the very system that thirsted for, and engineered Dutertismo [5]. Our political economy, plagued with weak parties, deep inequality, and consolidated oligarchy, creates the very vacuum that strongman populism promises to fill.

This systemic failure makes conventional political optimism sound increasingly detached from reality. Ideally [6], our democratic institutions should naturally self-correct through regular electoral processes. But our history shows that "ideally" is a luxury our material conditions cannot support. Without dismantling the underlying machinery of patronage and cognitive capture, structural reform remains a rhetorical loop.

This brings every Filipino abroad, like myself, to the inevitable existential crossroads: Is it still worth going back? The temptation to remain in the predictable quiet of Sydney is real. Yet, for me, the answer remains a stubborn yes.

On a pragmatic note, I have no desire to test Prof. Winnie Monsod’s threat of her ghost, pulling my feet in the middle of the night, and telling me that I have let the Philippines down [7].

But seriously, the deeper anchor rests in the communities I have met throughout my career. The civil societies, local leaders, and Filipinos whose stories shaped my persona. Their struggles are not abstract data points; they are the people who lent me their perspective when my own was limited. To abandon the home front permanently feels like an act of intellectual and emotional insolvency.

Independence Day should not be a superficial celebration of a flag or a declaration signed in 1898. (I just saw history Prof. Xiao Chua's now-deleted Facebook post arguing another independence day date. Haha!) It should be an annual audit of our collective freedom. Once upon a time, during the heat of 2022, we dreamt of a better Philippines. That dream may have been deferred, but they did not erase the structural reality that 16+ million of Filipinos (and growing) realized what good governance actually looks like. We still harbor that ambition because we now know it is possible.

Change in the archipelago has always been an agonizingly slow, generational project. But we still can reshape it, and from the vantage point of both history and exile (haha!), perhaps the most revolutionary thing we can do is refuse to give up on the experiment.

Maybe, just maybe, we can try again.

Maligayang Araw ng Kalayaan, Pilipinas. Maging tunay kang malaya!

[Happy Independence day, Philippines. Be truly free!]

[1] ROSE AGUIRRE VLOGS. (2025, March 28). IBALIK NYO SI TATAY DIGONG (By: Atty Jimmy Bondoc) Duterte theme song: Lyrics video [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyfJM32AeU0

[2] Nine Degrees North. (2024, December 19). Rosas (Live at The Cozy Cove) – Nica del Rosario [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqr9mekeI2E

[3] Heydarian, R. J. (2017, December 4). The Philippines’ strongman syndrome. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/12/4/the-philippines-strongman-syndrome

[4] Robredo, L. (2021, October 6). "Buong-buo ang loob ko": Robredo to run for president in 2022 [Speech transcript]. Inquirer News. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1498306/its-final-robredo-to-run-for-president-in-2022

[5] Claudio, L. V. (2017). Liberalism and the Postcolony: Thinking the State in 20th-Century Philippines. Kyoto University Press.

[6] Aquino, B. (2026, February 16). Bam Aquino: EJK cases should be tried in PH courts. GMA Network. https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/976813/bam-aquino-ejk-cases-should-be-tried-in-ph-courts/story/ (Hahaha!)

[7] Bizmanagement Phils. (2013, March 11). Honor and Excellence (Prof. Monsod's last lecture to her class) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYfgIIyps44