Sec 35

Angulo, Mark Lynell C.

Bautista, Kaycee M.
Cabatic, Aileen Kate T.
Galano, Pauline Anne A.
Isberto, Ariel Jr. A.
Mirabueno, Eljhon O.
San Pedro, Dannie Anne Marie A.

Part 1
Q: What compromise did the senators supporting the bill and those who opposed it agree, which
enabled the bill to receive unanimous vote of the senate, and the signature of President Ramon
Magsaysay?
A:
During the year (1950s) of the arduous process of proclaiming the Rizal Bill into a
Republic Act (law), the Philippines is exercising the 1935 Philippine Constitution, wherein
Article VI Section 2 states: “The Senate shall be composed of twenty-four Senators who shall be
chosen at large by the qualified electors of the Philippines, as may be provided by law.” The
Senate comprises of a system of votes in law-making. Just like any other law, the Rizal Bill was
put into voting wherein it received a unanimous vote from the senate and gained the signature
and approval of President Ramon Magsaysay.
Proclamation of the Rizal Bill to law was mainly possible to the settlement that proposing
and opposing senators agreed to. The compromise, which can be found on page 549, is that “a
student who would serve written notice under oath, to the head of the college or university that
the reading and study of the unexpurgated edition is contrary to his religion or religious beliefs;
said student shall be exempt from using the said edition.”
The paragraph above articulates the compromise that senators agreed to and the main
reason why the bill received a unanimous vote from the senate and the signature of Ramon
Magsaysay. This furnish that was engineered may favor the church based from De La Costa. But,
under Article III Section 7 of the 1935 Philippine Constitution, it states that: “No law shall be
made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, and the
free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or
preference, shall forever be allowed. No religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or
political rights.” The Philippines is benevolent neutral. This simply expresses that the state is not
allowed to endorse any religion in the Philippines (separatist). The church is not allowed to
interact with the state. Passing Rizal Bill to law is for the general benefit of society, which is
another reason to receive a unanimous vote.
Furthermore, condition of the church to not have any annotated versions of the novels so
to avoid any misleading, deceptive and confusing teachings that may cause misunderstanding
among the students and readers was pointed out clearly in the provisions. This served as one of
the basis in the compromise that the senators worked out. The compromise did set some
measures to create the freedom for the students to not take the reading and study of the novels
(2nd paragraph). Although a failed effort was made to remove impractical provisions, the
conditions continued to be ignored because the people did not take on the views of the Church
about the danger of the novels to their faith as detrimental or a sin.
Currently, no one has filed an affidavit concerning any contradictions to one’s belief in
reading the unexpurgated version of Rizal’s novels (Ocampo, 2000). Ever since this course was
taught, the compromise that was, considered by Acosta, “a victory for the local Catholic church,”
but in fact a face-saving compromise, is still untouched.

Part 2
Deepening: Group Discussion
Q: What do you think are the vices and defects of the Filipinos now and then? How do these
vices and defects victimize us today? Use a Venn Diagram. Identify those defects and discuss
how those vices and defects affect us today.

PAST/NAKARAAN NOW/NGAYON

 Other races >  Gossip  White complexion >

Filipino race  Inferiority Brown complexion
Complex
 Foreign tongue =
 Spanish Language > Intelligence  English Language >
Filipino Language Filipino Language
 Passivity
 Hypocrisy/ Double
Standards
 Lack of courage to  Abusing Freedom of
fight  Colonial Mentality
 Crab Speech but lacks
Mentality initiative
Gossip
Although verbal means is one of the ways to disseminate information to one another or a
community in the past, it can still serve as a defect if abused and left unscrutinized. Gossiping
can be harmful because it’s prone to twisted truth. Nowadays, it’s even more harmful with the
rise of social media because information is distributed at a worldwide or, at least, a large scale.
And most people ignore, or forget to even investigate if a certain information is true and tend to
believe them, most of the times, just because it fits only a sliver of truth in them or close their
thinking to what they only want to accept as the whole truth of the spreading gossip. Gossip, in
fact, is under the Presidential Decree No. 90 where President Marcos ordered that “any person
who shall offer, publish, distribute, circulate and spread rumors, false news and information and
gossip … shall, upon conviction, be punished by prison correccional.” Although such decree
exists, there were 3951 complaints for cybercrime and cyber-related offenses in 2016 alone
(DOJ, 2017).
An example of this happened on July 24, 2018 when a sales agent, Mr. Gabriel Ilano,
accused Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) secretary general Renato Reyes Jr. of
corruption. The accusation post was, then, picked up by numerous, seemingly reliable pages in
social media, which spread the rumor further. Reyes called out on Ilano saying that the post is
“fake news” and threatened to take the case to court. After which Ilano approached Reyes,
apologized and claimed that his account was hacked (Tantuco, 2018)
Another example is the municipality of Binalonan, where people gather under the trees to
exchange slivers of information defaming common folk who lived there and the local
government. This was not tolerated by Binalonan Mayor, Ramon Guico III, as he passed an anti-
gossip ordinance, 4 months ago, to stop the rumor cases (The Guardian, 2019). Guico also said
that passing laws related to anti-rumors doesn’t, in any way, affect the people’s freedom of
speech instead it is to free them from slander and the like.

Inferiority Complex
This is evident in both the past and the present Filipino times and one of the reasons why
the Philippines is struggling to attain global competitiveness. Filipinos are well-aware of their
own history of how they were colonized for over 4 centuries. In that period of time, Filipinos
were abused and denounced of their being, developing inferiority complex and self-imposed
racism. Nowadays, skin complexion is one of the focuses of our inferiority complex. According
to Luisito Batongbakal, “but while the value of pale skin has slowly diminished in the west, the
superiority of white skin still remains in Asian countries, specifically in the Philippines,” he
mentioned this in his article, entitled, “A Brief History of Filipinos’ Obsession With White
Skin”. This complex can damage our perspective of real beauty and possibly damage one’s self-
esteem causing mental health issues.

Foreign Tongue = Intelligence

This defect is one that’s very prominent in our modern society and was also a defect of
the past. Elites of the past used languages foreign to the Filipinos. During Rizal’s time, most
people with high status in the society fluently spoke Spanish language and had little or no
knowledge of their native tongue. Common folk had no ways of learning the Spanish language
because of the fear of the Spanish that Filipinos would start to learn and understand them,
leading to rebellion. In the present times, it is still prevalent with people associating the English
language to intelligence. Filipinos tend to be in awe if somebody speaks in fluent English when
in fact, sometimes, there’s little knowledge to what that person actually says. In other instances,
there are Filipinos who abuse their knowledge of foreign language to belittle a fellow Filipino.
An example of this is a video that became viral on social media, it shows a young
Filipina, Juana Dela Cruz, berating a female security guard with her English-speaking capacity
(Philstar, 2012). The video is just one of the many instances that portray the connotation of the
Filipinos of the English language with intelligence. With instances similar to the mentioned
report, Filipinos begin to consider Filipino language inferior and undermine its value. If this
perspective perseveres, then our nation will only continue to be divided by distinguishing the
educated from the underprivileged instead of using the knowledge of the language to unite the
people.

Passivity
One of the reasons why our country does not progress is the Filipinos’ passivity, or the
lack of initiative. We keep complaining about the many problems of the Philippines and blaming
the government. However, we, ourselves, do not do anything about them. And when given the
chance to take the lead or impose change, we tend to retreat and make excuses. Filipinos have
developed a fear of being ostracized by their own society. If this behavior continues, nothing
positive will come to the Philippines’ development.

Hypocrisy/Double Standards
Most of the Filipinos try to live up to the standards set by the traditional society.
However, as no one is perfect, many of us aren't actually able to sustain these standards. The fear
of being an outcast has forced a lot of people to live a double standard life. We tend to be
condemning to those who are caught red-handed just to hide our failure in following a norm.
This behavior can be observed in just about every sector of the Philippines society. On the nation
scale, we see politicians spouting promises of reform and good governance only to break them in
the end. In simple words, Filipinos are hypocrites to the core.
Double standards, this vice is something that was present then and is still present in our
society. Back then, women don’t have the right to suffrage and only men get to access such a
privilege right. It was only until September 17, 1937 when women’s right to vote was legalized
in Philippines. Today, it is something that is epidemic to our society and country. Leaders must
live by their own standards to be credible. Our president (Rodrigo Duterte) portrays the perfect
example of a person who has a double standard psyche. Duterte advertises independent foreign
policies and announced that it is one of his objectives as president to protect the lands of the
country, specifically, the West Philippine Sea. But, in his most current SONA, he announced the
surrender of our islands in the West Philippine Sea. Letting Chinese fishermen take our
fishermen’s catch.
Colonial Mentality
Colonial mentality, one of the most revolting vice and defect of the Filipino culture
today. Recently, the crisis upon rice grain prices has dropped down to 35% (Php 7.00 per kilo)
which made our poor farmers suffer further. This is due to us and our government favoring to
import Vietnamese rice grains to supply the demand of NFA rice instead of patronizing other
quality rice brands produced by our own farmers in our country. This crisis is happening due to
the law that Duterte signed: Republic Act 11203, “An Act Liberalizing the Importation,
Exportation and Trading of Rice, Lifting for the Purpose the Quantitative Import Restriction on
Rice, and for Other Purposes.” Laws are meant to beneficial.

Crab Mentality
This toxic mentality has been depriving Filipinos of true progress in oneself and as a
nation. In simple terms it means, “If I can’t have it, neither can you” derived from the analogy of
crabs in a pot pulling down one another to let no one escape. This behavior has become a norm
in the Philippine society. Instead of celebrating others’ victory, Filipinos tend to give in to envy
and will try almost any means to pull someone back down in life.
In the late 16th century, when we were colonized by the Spaniards. The natives or indios
as they were called by the Spaniards lost all their rights to live, freedom; as well as their
properties. These indios worked for the peninsularies or the Spaniards who are born in spain but
living here in our country and the insularies or the Spaniards born here in country. To be able to
survive they embraced the crab mentality so that when they succeed in destroying one’s image,
indios now will be the new favorites of the insularies and peninsularies. Crab mentality was still
practiced even after the colonization of the Spaniards where we’re next colonized by the
Japanese and American.
Many centuries passed but until now the memento of crab mentality is still existing in the
modern day. This mentality of the Filipinos is widely shown everywhere in all level. For
example, In an election, if one of the candidate for the presidency wins, the elected officers from
the other party will not work effectively and efficiently with the newly elected president in
helping him to attain the progress and change for the country. Others will not express approval
for their opponent’s proposition for the Philippines nor the other group who truly supports the
other candidate will help each other to create and find tittle-tattle or gossips to throw at someone
just to ruin his reputation.
We, Filipinos are victims of this illness crab mentality and it shatters the reputation of our
country that restrains the progress of our country and still wonder this country still poor. We are
all trapped and can’t ever escape in a bucket.