Being Filipino

It's been more than a year since my last blog post... It was about the burial  of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

And it wasn't my article... I was just sharing it .... written by a group of lawyers who wanted to remain individually anonymous. So much has happened since then.

Being a resident in another country, and looking at what is happening all over the world... in the Philippines, in the USA and Europe, one cannot help but be dismayed and disheartened with the coming year.

The Extra Judicial Killings in the Philippines, the escalating conflict between Trump and North Korea, the slave trade in Libya, continuing tension in the Middle East, and of course, the terrorist attacks in the US and other parts of the world that everyone sadly seems to have accepted as ordinary.

Being a Filipino living overseas, and hoping to acquire citizenship in my country of residence soon, I am both saddened and excited at the prospect.

Unlike in the previous years however, where the prospect of giving up my Filipino citizenship would bring sadness to my mind (and fully considering applying for dual citizenship), the current sadness I feel is different.

With what is happening in and to the Philippines under Duterte, I am more revolted at the attitude and principles of many Filipinos, some of them very good friends and family members, in supporting, not only the Extra Judicial Killings, but the continuous destruction of democracy.

Duterte himself I can accept.... I've lived through the Marcos years to accept the existence of evil men. But to see many of my countrymen condoning and supporting such evil acts makes me feel hopeless on the future of my country of birth.

The sadness I am currently feeling, which I mentioned earlier,  is not in losing my Filipino citizenship, very soon, but in my own lack of desire to keep it.
I cannot, in all honesty, deny my longing to acquire my new citizenship,  and remove the shame of being a Filipino in the now , the present....

Writing this helps .... it vents my anger on what is happening in the Philippines.

And hopefully, once the rage subsides, I will remember what it was about being a Filipino, that I was so proud of... what it was about being a Filipino citizen, that I was so sad of losing.