By ARTHUR L. ALLAD-IW
www.nordis.net

Various sizes of the Philippine flags are displayed in establishments and areas in the city. At the Maharlika Building, the displayed flags caught the attention of a little boy, who was walking with his mother at the overpass. I overheard him ask many questions from his mother about the Philippine flag, particularly why these flags were displayed that time.

That was on May 28.

May 28th is the Philippine Flag Day because it was during this day in 1898 that the national flag was first unfurled. The celebration is now set from May 28 to June 12, the Philippine Independence Day. Hence, we see various flags in all sizes displayed in various areas or places all over the Philippines and in other countries where the Philippines has jurisdictions. In fact, we have RA 8491, passed on February 12, 1998, now known as the Flag and Heraldic Code of the Philippines. It governs the Philippine emblem and the national anthem, particularly.

The display of the Philippine flag is an expression of one’s patriotic love for his country. This is also the same with the singing of the national anthem. It is therefore understandable that some Filipinos are contented to showing their patriotic love for the country by displaying the national flag from May 28 to June 12.

An act, therefore, that would prohibit the display of this nationalist signage would be considered a suppression of your patriotic love to your country. Much more so if such prohibition is meant to suppress a movement for independence.

It is from the above that I want to visit a period in our colonial history. It was a time when the American colonizers prohibited the display of the Philippine flag.

After the Americans took over the Philippines from Spain in that so called Treaty of Paris – where the former paid 20 million dollars to the latter, the Americans passed various anti-nationalist laws to contain the Filipino aspiration for independence.

One of the laws passed was the Brigandage Act which considered participating in the independence revolutionary movement as a brigand (tulisan) act. Another one was Act No. 1696 known as the Flag law, passed on September 6, 1907. The Flag law prohibited the display of the Philippine national flag (including nationalist flags, banners or symbols particularly identified with the revolutionary Katipunan) in any place in the Philippine archipelago. The same law prohibited the playing and singing of the national anthem. That Americans suppression of patriotism – through the non-display of Philippine flag – ran from 1907 to 1919, the height of the campaign against the freedom loving Filipinos they classified as tulisanes.

This period also was the time the Americans worked at co-opting the Filipino illustrados in their newly established bicameral legislature: the lower chamber the Philippine Assembly and the upper chamber Philippine Commission. Of course such American moves paved the way for a smooth colonial rule by the Americans in the whole Philippine archipelago.

Connecting our historical past with the present, it is therefore the duty of every Filipinos to rekindle their nationalism on the aspirations of our forefathers for a truly independent Philippines. This is could be a better time to reflect if we are following the foot steps of our forefathers and if we are on the same road of nationalism that they struggled for. # nordis.net