Heroes, Villains, and the Burden of Perspective in Philippine Political Life
By Karl Garcia
Philippine political discourse has long been shaped by moral binaries. Individuals and movements are frequently cast as heroes or villains, rebels or revolutionaries, patriots or threats. Yet beneath these labels lies a more complex reality: perception is inseparable from perspective. History, geography, class, trauma, and memory all shape how Filipinos interpret power, resistance, and legitimacy.
The struggle to reconcile these competing narratives is not merely intellectual. It influences elections, justice, social cohesion, and even family relationships. In a nation marked by colonial subjugation, dictatorship, insurgency, and democratic restoration, the politics of perspective becomes both unavoidable and volatile.
The Fluidity of Heroes and Villains
Heroes and villains are rarely fixed categories. They are products of historical interpretation.
People Power Revolution, also known as EDSA, is celebrated globally as a triumph of nonviolent resistance. It restored democratic institutions after years of authoritarian rule. For many Filipinos, it symbolizes civic courage, moral clarity, and collective agency.
Yet even EDSA is not immune to reinterpretation. Critics argue that it replaced one elite faction with another, failed to dismantle structural inequalities, and produced democratic forms without fully resolving oligarchic influence. What one generation views as liberation, another may see as incomplete transformation.
This does not diminish the revolution’s historical significance. Rather, it illustrates how political memory evolves alongside lived experience.
Martial Law: Order, Trauma, and Contested Memory
No period better demonstrates the clash of perspectives than Martial Law under Ferdinand Marcos Sr..
For survivors and historians, Martial Law evokes censorship, arrests, torture, disappearances, cronyism, and economic decline. It represents a cautionary tale about concentrated power and democratic fragility.
For others, particularly those who recall perceived improvements in infrastructure, discipline, and security, the era is remembered with ambivalence or even nostalgia. Social media has amplified revisionist narratives emphasizing “golden age” imagery.
The divergence is not purely ideological. It reflects generational distance, regional experience, economic circumstance, and the uneven distribution of both repression and development. Memory, like politics, is contested terrain.
Rebellion, Resistance, and Legitimacy
Armed movements complicate moral categorization.
The Hukbalahap, initially formed to resist Japanese occupation during World War II, later confronted the postwar Philippine state over land reform and peasant rights. To sympathizers, the Huks embodied anti-feudal struggle. To the government, they represented insurgency and instability.
Similarly, the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, framed their struggle as revolutionary transformation against inequality and imperialism. Supporters cite enduring rural poverty and governance failures as root causes. Critics point to decades of violence, extortion, civilian harm, and ideological rigidity.
The rebel-versus-revolutionary debate reveals a deeper tension: When does resistance become justified? When does it become destructive? Perspective shapes the answer, but violence imposes consequences that transcend rhetoric.
Victimhood, Agency, and Political Identity
Political actors often invoke victimhood. States claim victimization by destabilizing forces; activists claim victimization by repression; communities claim victimization by both.
Victimhood can illuminate genuine suffering — human rights abuses, displacement, poverty, discrimination. But it can also become politicized, used to deflect accountability or monopolize moral authority.
In polarized environments, narratives of harm compete rather than converge. Empathy becomes conditional: one group’s tragedy is another’s exaggeration. The danger lies not in acknowledging victimhood, but in weaponizing it.
The Duterte Divide: Governance and Moral Fracture
The presidency of Rodrigo Duterte exemplifies the power of perspective in contemporary politics.
For supporters, Duterte represented decisiveness, anti-elite rhetoric, and a promise of order amid crime and bureaucratic inertia. Many perceived tangible improvements in local safety or governance style, particularly in Mindanao.
For critics, his administration symbolized extrajudicial killings, weakened institutional safeguards, normalization of violent rhetoric, and democratic erosion.
Neither perception can be dismissed as trivial. Each is anchored in lived realities, values, fears, and priorities. The resulting divide fractured public discourse, academic debates, and personal relationships — often within the same families.
Why Perspective Matters — and Why It Is Not Enough
Perspective helps explain disagreement but cannot alone resolve moral questions. Understanding why people support controversial leaders or movements does not require endorsing all outcomes. Likewise, condemning abuses does not require caricaturing supporters as irrational.
Democratic maturity demands holding tension between:
- Empathy and accountability
- Context and principle
- Pluralism and human rights
Some actions — torture, corruption, indiscriminate violence — resist relativism. Perspective contextualizes judgment; it does not erase ethical boundaries.
Policy Implications: Bridging Divides Without Erasing Truth
If perception shapes political conflict, reconciliation requires structural as well as cultural responses.
1. Strengthening Civic and Historical Literacy
Educational reforms should deepen critical engagement with Philippine history, media literacy, and constitutional principles. The goal is not ideological conformity but analytical capacity — enabling citizens to evaluate claims, sources, and narratives.
Historical distortions flourish where institutions of memory are weak.
2. Protecting Institutional Credibility
Courts, electoral bodies, human rights institutions, and statistical agencies must maintain independence and transparency. When institutions lose legitimacy, citizens retreat into partisan realities where perspective hardens into dogma.
Trustworthy institutions moderate polarization.
3. Encouraging Deliberative Public Discourse
Media, universities, and civil society can promote forums for structured debate rather than outrage-driven exchanges. Polarization intensifies when discourse rewards emotional extremity over reasoned dialogue.
Democracy requires arenas where disagreement remains humanized.
4. Addressing Structural Inequality
Persistent poverty, regional disparity, and governance failures fuel both insurgency narratives and strongman appeal. Reconciliation cannot succeed if underlying grievances remain unaddressed.
Economic justice is political stabilization.
5. Human Rights and Accountability
Accountability mechanisms — transitional justice, truth-telling initiatives, reparations — help societies confront harm without perpetuating cycles of vengeance. Forgetting is not reconciliation; denial is not unity.
Healing requires recognition.
Conclusion: The Discipline of Nuance
Philippine political life resists simple stories. Heroes have flaws. Villains have defenders. Rebels may carry both ideals and violence. Leaders inspire both loyalty and fear.
Perspective explains divergence but should not imprison judgment. The challenge for Filipinos is not to eliminate disagreement — an impossible task — but to cultivate a political culture capable of complexity, memory, and ethical clarity.
In an age of algorithm-driven outrage and historical revisionism, nuance becomes an act of civic responsibility.
Perhaps the most stabilizing force in a divided democracy is not louder conviction, but deeper understanding — anchored not in relativism, but in truth, dignity, and shared constitutional ground.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 