Wednesday is what most of us consider as the middle of the week. Something to look forward to at the end of the workday knowing that the other half of the week will lead to the weekend. It is a touchstone for most of the working class. It is as if the worst is now behind us. We can cruise until the weekend comes. Wednesday is the crossroads in the week. For those who have labored so hard on Monday and Tuesday. In most bars, Wednesday is Ladies' Night. A Promtion to lift up the spirits of the stressed and tired, to tide them over until the weekend. Days of recuperation and respite. A time for home, family and friends. A time for the weekly respite on a middle of the week.
Today is Wednesday. The economy shows strength in GDP indicators and yet the poorest of the poor have yet to benefit from it. International Rating Agencies have yet to put food on the tables of millions of Filipino children who will sleep on mats, cardboards, bare floors and garbage without eating supper. Those who are sick will not get any doctors, medicines and medical attention today because is Wednesday. Many of them will die because they did not have the medicines and medical attention because it is Wednesday.
Today is Wednesday. Many of the people have no jobs because of failed economic policies made during that Wednesday. Industrialization was thrown out so as to assuage the IMF-WB conditions on what the Philippine economy must be after the 1947 Bretton Woods Agreement. In exchane for loans, the country must not industrialize. our people will just be the market for the products of other countries. our people will just be hewers of wood and carriers of water. And yet the country will need dollars to survive. Hotels, the Cultural Center, PICC, Folk Arts Theater, the Manila Film Center were financed by those loans in order to attract tourists. Agreements were made with Middle East countries for Philippine labor. At such acost. The cost was a Presidential Decree that automatically allocated 40% of Philippine government revenues to automatic debt payment. Now, no industrialization meant no jobs. Now we have the Diaspora of Filipinos to foreign lands. The cost is social and very hard to measure. The very fabric of the Filipino family is now being threatened. How I miss my sister and brother. These all happened on Wednesday.
Today is Wednesday. When elected and appointed government officials run roughshod over the people. Giving them crumbs, corrupting their values and morals so as to sustain a Ruling Class that is answerable to no one. Of having the biggest mansions, the most delicious food, the best and fanciest vehicles, the most lavish parties, the finest clothes and the most money. They do so because of the Pork Barrel system. They do so because of corruption. They do so because they have made beggars of the people so that they will be elected again and again and again. Because it is always Wednesday and they made a Mendicant State.
Macliing Dulag. Dr. Johnny Escandor, Eman Lacaba, Edgar Jopson, Alex Boncayao, and thousands of soldiers, MNLF, NPA, activists, workers and way before them Elias, they all died on Wednesday.
It is a Tuesday now, but our country is still at Wednesday.
Today is Wednesday. Our country is at the crossroads. We must decide if we are to be a better country, having ridden over the hump for the promise of a weekend or to be stuck on Wednesday.
All the evil started on Wednesday. In Malacanang. Marcos surrounded by his Rolex Twelve. They were making the countdown.
September 20, 1972 was a Wednesday. The next day was September 21, 1972. The day Martial Law was declared.
Today is a Wednesday.
