Days ago, Iran allowed Philippine-flagged ships safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. To the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) bureaucracy and leadership, we say bravo, you deserve the public’s applause. However small or great the respite, given the global emergency created by the war on Iran, the relief this will give our people will matter. The DFA has done well in supporting the cause of Palestine in the UN, something that likely helped sway Iran’s decision. It would have been easy for Tehran to check UN voting records. DFA positions on Palestine today is an outcome of the nationalism espoused by many in the bureaucracy, many of them young, stubborn, and wise beyond their years. They know that doing the right thing – supporting the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination – is in the national interest. But it wasn’t always like this.

 

In the early 90s, working with the valiant Timorese resistance and the likes of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, comrades in mischief such as Joel Saracho, and his Indonesian friend, the late George Aditjondro, RC Constantino led the international solidarity campaign that helped free East Timor. Back then, the DFA had adopted a supplicant’s position, acting like a province of Indonesia against the realization of what is now Timor Leste, the newest member of ASEAN. But things change, as it always does. Sometimes we regress; many times we advance.

 

RC was always clear about the kind of nationalism he espoused, one rooted in our people’s history, defined and advanced by heroes and social movements that helped birth our nation, a Filipino nationalist agenda ready to extend solidarity in support of subjugated peoples and the vulnerable. It emerged from our common past and is distinguished from the national chauvinism that brutalized Europe and other nations. RC’s nationalism was always animated by the Katipunan and the Revolution it unleashed, when the downtrodden constituted themselves as the nation, a transformation that allows us today to define what constitutes “national interest.” The Katipunan fought for freedom from Spain and to secure long-term kaguinhawaan – ginhawa – for our people. It is why the Katipunan under Bonifacio signed itself not as “hari ng bayan” but as “Haring Bayan” which means the Sovereign People, with a foreign affairs bureaucracy today that supports, like Iran, the freedom of Palestine. Our decolonization is far from complete, but the ultimate promise of Philippine nationalism, rooted in our country’s past, remains within reach. It is thus something we must continue to pursue – together. #PastsRevisited #TheContinuingPast