RAIN OF FIRE

By Cesar G. Bonilla

Love of country

LAOAG CITY -- Typhoon Karen unleashed her fury in Ilocos Norte while Cagayan suffered the most of its devastating effect. Classes were suspended to ensure the safety of students especially those who hailed from remote municipalities where flood could be of danger to residents.

Many vehicles were stranded because of heavy floods as a result of haphazard construction of drainage canals. The unfinished bridge gave additional problems considering that the temporary bridge being the only way to pass through the other side of the road couldn’t accommodate all vehicles especially heavy ones. The people involved in its construction paralyzed travel in the area and this was highlighted by the recent storm.
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The death of the late Sen. Benigno Aquino, Jr. is remembered this month of August to give significance to the extreme sacrifice he made, for the victory of Filipino idealism over personal interest and greed for power.

A gifted man, both in pedigree and speech, and notwithstanding his young age when he assumed power as governor of his own province, he repeated the same feat of extraordinary ascendancy in the Senate full of ideas and raging for a stop of the Marcos dictatorship.

His wife, former President Corazon C. Aquino said Ninoy has come to symbolize the struggle of weakness against power, courage against organized oppression of the individual against the state. There is the image of him lying on the tarmac, defying an oppressive government.

He is the historic demonstration that one can destroy a man, but not defeat him. A man can only defeat himself. In one of the interviews of Ninoy, he said that he cannot stay and live comfortably while the people suffered.

The Spaniards killed Rizal and made him a hero of his people. Truly, his death was a turning point of all the most significant events in the country that let to the ouster of the late president Ferdinand E. Marcos.

That barbaric slaying of him at the tarmac spelled a lot of difference in the country’s transition to a so-called democracy. Nowadays, there are many opportunists who are shouting for Ninoy’s heroism but who are not following the virtues he espoused.

Call it hypocrisy. The country is still best by opposite ideologies. For Ninoy, what he wanted was freedom and independence for the country. There is no true heroism without sacrifice. Love of God and country is what is needed now.