Radical

when about a couple of hundred workers of the Hacienda Luisita controlled by the family of former Pres. Corazon Aquino were ordered by the DOLE to return to work with a measly increase in daily wage and a fishy retroactive financial assistance, they refused to settle down in the comfort of their jobs. Their demands, they said, were not met. By and large, they were not the majority of the entire labor force of the Luisita. About 500 hundred remained loyal to it. As scabs, they were in constant threats.

Many strikers died in the confrontations. The enmity undoused by government exacerbates to no known political limit. This prods the peasants and their supporters to inch some more on gainful grounds.

The radical, which has been the customary opponent of the established order termed also the state or the right, is fueled by the left to espouse changes in the political or socio-economic practices in the community. Any downtrend therefore experienced by the government is a battlefield of the radical and his number increases as turbulence escalates. Much of the signs of this radicalism manifests in the workers of the Aquino-controlled holdings. They were present too in the EDSA revolutions if you might call them so.

This is even a predication to the languishing issue that PGMA may not finish her 6-year term. Nonetheless, it may lead to that if really the government’s house-of-cards crumbles. When you see widespread and violent demonstrations in the streets, it may be time to seek cover.

The government has, time and again, tried to disarm radicalism. Administrations give concession of every sort to it. They single out influential radical leaders and extend them graces or appease the group with possible offer of reconciliation but radicalism with its rooted growth won’t even soften. It does usually creep into the corridors of the rightists while the opposing political group lurk at every little mistake including insignificant ones of the former. Then a fraction of the right becomes radicalized. This is the loud civil organization we have observed at the EDSA.

To the social scientists, on their original upbringing in any basic science like philosophy, religion, politics, etc., this civility turns to elitism, excluding all others, not the radicals. The tendency is natural. It is suffocated by its own advances. For all their convulsive acts, only time can tell whether they will lean to the left or the right. Whichever, they are the opportunists. We have localized them as “Balimbings.”

It appears that the prospects of radicalism have become to many in the community a buy and sell transaction before and after and during election. It’s doing everyone no good. The government can’t nip it to the bud for it remains unconvincing. Its perspective stalls and sucks no farther than its conduits. It’s a sorry mess.

Take for instance the work of Gen. Edgardo Aglipay in the recent former Pres. Erap Estrada Hongkong trip where the first is allegedly only doing his job on security to the discomfort of some Estrada well-wishers or that of the senator-son of Erap. Today the senator-son is magnifying the issue to high heavens, including sanctions on PNP budget. Is the senator confused of his being an ordinary citizen when not a senator? Multiply it and it toughens the radical.