21/09/2025
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ | โAng bayan ko, binihag ka. Nasakdal sa dusa.โ
The radio blared this tune. Stereo equipment sang a short tale from this song. Bayan Ko, the second Philippine anthem, implicitly spoke out against ourselves, the un-Filipino leaders of the past, present, and future resembling our oppressors of before.
The Vincentian, the Universidad de Sta. Isabel de Naga, Inc. Basic Education Department's official student publication, commemorates and wails truthfully on this grassroots defiance against those who cut the cord to the mic, those who drank all the ink of the pen, as truth reigns king in every human society that there will ever be. Let us remember what the individuals before us had.
At 7:15 p.m. on September 23, 1972, the nation held its breath as President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. appeared on live television from Malacaรฑang Palace. With a single declaration, martial law was imposed. Civil liberties were stripped away. The writ of habeas corpus was suspended. And in one swift motion, all powerโbureaucratic, military, and politicalโfell into the iron grip of one man.
But the meager voices of the oppressed would not be silenced. They cried out in the streets, rallying not for themselves, but for the country that was betrayed. Students rose in defiance, their placards raised like banners of freedom, only to be gunned down by the Philippine Constabulary. Campus journalists, once the vanguards of truth, were stifledโpens broken, mouths beaten, and bodies brutalizedโby Verโs dreaded National Intelligence and Security Authority, the regimeโs secret police.
And while the youth bled, the powerful feasted. Congressmen hurled accusations of subversion and rebellion, red-tagging at their own people, as they dined at banquets served by the hand of Marcos himself.
This was not a government of the people, by the people, nor was it for the people. This was tyranny masquerading as leadership. This was power drunk on fear. This was a monstrosity defiling the dignity of a nationโa Philippines betrayed, a Philippines denied.
That is what the eyes of the Philippine youth are upon today. Dictated by the white lies of congressmen and senatorsโ โbuwayaโ snouts, our elders drown from the annual flooding, our infants die from the lack of sufficient child care and sex-ed materials, and most fundamentally, our generation is stifled by the prospects of prosperity that will never be, so long that they are in power.
The โtheyโ in extravagant designer clothing, lavish sports cars, tennis shoes, they are the fruitful households that further regurgitate this tenfoldโplunderers playing a syndicate's game rather than serving his countrymen. No longer will we tar and feather our society by surrendering our pockets that they consume.
We will fight, like how those before us fought. But our fight is not chaos for chaosโ sake. It is a fight rooted in conviction, sharpened by truth, and driven by the duty to speak for the voiceless. The Vincentian espouses the holistic values of Christ and the Trinity, and to fight is not to incite prodigious unrest, but to hold the sword of truth, wielded through journalism, prayer, and relentless courage.
For this is what a government of the people, by the people, and for the people must stand for: to expose the lies, to end the suffering of its citizens, and to carry this nation forward; not into darkness, but into greatness evermore.
๐๏ธ: Miguel Gerona
๐จ: Azhie Camigla, Princess Veronica Villafuerte, and Sara Casimero
