Has New Politics Died?

Padaca lost. Not just to anyone, but to the same political dynasty she so valiantly won against just years before. Panlilio lost, too, and it looks like his situation mimics Padaca's. The old corrupt are back. As Carlos Celdran recently put it, we have not made history, we have simply repeated it.

A few friends are mumbling the word "migrate". It's just a word for now, but I wonder if it will ripen into deed or remain just that. Heartbreak weaves through those of us who have worked so hard so that 2010 would be a banner year for change.

I spoke about feeling like we had crossed a threshold as a nation on May 10. That nebulous feeling is beginning to take shape. We crossed a threshold, yes. And yet it seems we turned back. Our choices have created an impenetrable wall. We can't complain that it blocks the sunlight and keeps us in the dark, or barricades roads when we need to get across; we built it.

Yet a threshold WAS crossed. Because of our inability to understand what it takes to create change, we are now faced with the most daunting task of all--to face our role in this bloody stage we have reconstructed out of lessons never learned, out of our tenuous attachments to the familiar.

There can be no more finger-pointing. There can be no more blame. Now we need to work on creating incorruptible new shapes, forms and ways of moving in society--where pockets of integrity and uprightness can bloom, each creating a link to the next, working from the ground up.

More than ever, we must trust that committed individuals CAN make a change. If you believe that, then your work is cut out for you.

The only hope for the emergence of new politics is the birth of a new culture. That is our task.