The future we owe them

The future we owe them | Daily Tribune

Then came an even more audacious claim: “We are no longer students, we are teachers of democracy!”

He then turned to the youth, urging them, before casting their ballots on 11 May, to stand before the world and declare that they would build a great Republic.

“I am a Filipino, I am a builder, and I am a youth! Listen to me because the future is ours!” The line suggested that democracy was a continuing work: change carried through ballots, institutions, participation and building a Republic.

I was still a boy then. Manglapus was a familiar name at home. I remember my father arriving one afternoon in a car plastered with his campaign stickers. I heard stories about him before I understood their political meaning.

Some years later, perhaps when I was 10 or 11, I met him. My father took our photograph together. I still have it.

Manglapus would also figure meaningfully in my father’s public career. Their political paths later converged as the NUCD and UMDP joined the coalition that became Lakas-NUCD-UMDP.

But that history troubles me more today.

Manglapus was speaking to us. We were the young Filipinos being told that the future was ours.

Well, the future arrived. If democracy was the revolution handed to my generation, what did we do with it?

Before we complain that today’s young are cynical, impatient, distracted and detached, my generation should first answer a harder question: What did we give them to believe in?

We told them institutions mattered while allowing trust in many to weaken. We told them elections mattered, yet too often practiced citizenship most visibly only during campaign season.

We told them public service was honorable while permitting politics to become something many decent young people now avoid.

We asked them to believe in democracy. Did we always give them enough reason to? I ask this with some guilt.

A generation cannot forever call itself an heir to history. At some point, inheritance becomes stewardship. Stewardship becomes accountability.

The young will inherit our accomplishments. But they will also inherit reforms postponed, institutions neglected, habits tolerated and problems left for another administration, another election, another generation.

Manglapus called the youth builders. A Republic is never finished. Every generation receives foundations laid by others — cracks needing repair, unfinished rooms and sometimes rubble. Ours did. Theirs will.

Perhaps the revolution remains unfinished because democracy is never completed by one generation. It is strengthened, weakened and then handed forward.

We cannot hand our children a perfect Philippines. But surely, we owe them a country still capable of correction with institutions worth repairing. A public life in which decency is not mistaken for weakness. A democracy where participation still carries the possibility of change.

I look at that old photograph differently now. My father was behind the camera. Manglapus stood beside me. I was the child.

Today, I am closer to where my father stood than to where that boy was standing. Manglapus’ words no longer sound like merely a promise. They sound like an accounting.

“The future is ours.” Yes. It was. Now it is becoming theirs. But for a little while longer, the Republic we place in their hands remains ours to shape.