That part left unquoted
If the Pasig teaches us that even a neglected river may flow again, Quezon reminds us that a Republic may also renew itself.
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If the Pasig teaches us that even a neglected river may flow again, Quezon reminds us that a Republic may also renew itself.
Last week, I reflected on the renewal of the Pasig River. Watching a river slowly recover from decades of neglect reminded me that renewal is a quiet expression of hope. It seldom arrives all at once. It begins with the belief that what has been diminished is still worth reclaiming.
That reflection led me to wonder whether the same could be true of a Republic — not only of its rivers and institutions, but of the ideas that first gave it life.
The question brought me back to one of Manuel L. Quezon’s most enduring reflections on self-government: “I would rather have a government run like hell by Filipinos than a government run like heaven by…”
The line is often remembered that way. It is then met with a cynical reply: Be careful what you wish for. It came true.
Yet the familiar line was followed by the less-remembered addendum: “…because no matter how bad, a Filipino government might be improved.” Those few words change everything.
Without them, Quezon appeared to accept Filipino misrule simply because it was Filipino. With them, he argued something far more demanding: whatever goes wrong under our own government remains within our own power — and responsibility — to correct.
Quezon clarified the point. In a 1939 speech, he repeated his preference for Filipino rule, but rejected the notion that government by Filipinos must therefore be “run like hell,” or that government by foreigners could be “like heaven.”
The issue was never incompetence versus efficiency. It was the right — and burden — of governing ourselves.
Self-determination gives a people the freedom to choose their political destiny. Sovereignty gives them the authority to govern it. But neither means much without the harder discipline of self-government.
That discipline is tested not only in elections, but in what follows them: whether laws are applied fairly, whether public office remains a trust, whether institutions are stronger than personalities, and whether citizens demand integrity even from the leaders that they support.
That, perhaps, is the part we leave unquoted.
We celebrate independence more easily than responsibility. We remember the right to rule ourselves, but less often the obligation to repair what has gone wrong under our own watch. It is easier to speak of sovereignty as a possession than to live it as a duty.
The present generation, and indeed the present administration, inherit a rare opportunity — not to declare renewal accomplished, but to begin it with seriousness.
Such renewal will ultimately be measured not by speeches but by stronger institutions, honest public service, fair political participation, equal justice under the law and citizens who ask as much of themselves as they do of those they elect.
It will require resisting the temptation to treat every reform as temporary, every institution as personal and every failure as inherited. A Republic renews itself when correction becomes normal, accountability becomes expected, and public trust is rebuilt not by promise but by proof.
Renewal, after all, is never the work of the government alone.
If the Pasig teaches us that even a neglected river may flow again, Quezon reminds us that a Republic may also renew itself. Not because renewal is inevitable, but because free people possess something no foreign government could ever give them: the authority to improve what they themselves have made.
Quezon’s famous words do not excuse the hell we sometimes create. Their forgotten ending simply refuses to believe that we must remain there.
Renewal does not begin with remembering what Quezon said. It begins when we choose to live what he meant.
There is still much to be done.
