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Do we need another Filipino flag?

By RUDY LIPORADA

In 1985, I flew from Zambia, Africa to visit the Philippine Consular Office in Nairobi, north of the continent. The last leg of my trip was a five-block walk towards the consular office. As I approached, a speck fluttering in the distance backed by the azure sky, made my heart surge in anticipation. As I drew nearer, the speck became more recognizable.

Alone, walking the last stretch of sidewalk, I burst into sobs. I had not seen the Philippine flag flapping with the wind in four years.

Somehow, the red, white, and blue with the yellow sun and stars drew within me in that instance all the Filipino that I have been, have become and what would be – I was wrapped in homesickness, a trinomial romanticism, and identification complex rolled into one overwhelming emotion.

About ten years later, another eerie emotion clutched my throat when I swore allegiance to become a US citizen. When it came to the part where I had to pledge allegiance to no other flag but the US’s, there was a chill in my spine that resisted but I had to contain for I was to be and am an American now.

After that, I have had no telling emotions regarding the Filipino flag again for sometime until we had a June 12, 2003 flag raising ceremony to celebrate the Philippine 105th Independence Day in Oxnard, California where I used to reside. The City Government of Oxnard was gracious enough to raise our motherland’s colors at the City Hall.

However, horror or all horrors, against all protocols, a small Filipino flag was flown underneath a humongous US flag.

I tried hard to contain my being distraught. Until now, I am still convincing myself, with revulsion that I did right in not committing a scene. For the sake of peace, of not disrupting the ongoing program, and charging it to ignorance, I kept my mouth shut at that time although my soul was churning into a blaze.

However it may represent the greatest country on earth, the US flag, by international protocol, cannot fly higher and not be bigger, when placed side by side, than any flag representing another nation, even if that nation is only the lowly, poverty stricken nation I still embrace as my motherland.

Nonetheless, although I could be mushy about the incident, I am having this notion, questioning why, with so many Filipinos during the occasion, nobody caught the protocol error. Were there others who noticed it but, like me, just kept quiet? In my not saying anything, did I slide into my colonial mentality mode where anything foreign is greater than the Philippines? That I could accept the Filipino flag to be trampled underneath another country’s flag?

The acceptance, could it have a historical root – historical significance?

Note that the current Philippine flag was made in Hong Kong. It was designed out of romanticism and did not evolve like the blood-bathed flags of the Katipunan. It was also designed by the IIlustrado-led faction of the Katipunan which had the founder of the revolutionary forces, Andres Bonifacio, killed at Maragondon. Bonifacio was ordered killed not because he was a raitor but because he made the leadrship of the Katipunan’s faction uncomfortable on the strategy and tactics of the revolution against Spain. He made them uncomfortable because he was a lowly worker from Tondo and the faction, which grabbed the leadership from him, were educated.

Also, although the three stars represent Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, the three main island groupings in the Philippines; the eight rays of the sun represent the perceived eight provinces that participated in the revolution. Sectors of the Visayan provinces and Mindanao Muslims question this. Many other provinces like the Cordillera Igorots also question this. For this reason, not everyone could have readily identified with the Filipino flag.

Those early “insurrectos” against Spain who died definitely did not die for this flag. They died for the Katipunan flag.

Compare this to US’s Old Glory. The US flag was borne out of bloody battles and a war for liberation from colonial England.

So, the current Filipino flag was borne with the murder of Bonifacio on its flaps, a glorification of only a few provinces, and segregation of other forces during the revolution.

Could this be a reason why even if we have a flag that we should rally behind, the Filipinos are not that united? Could that disunity be reflected where Filipino abound outside of the motherland?

Could this be a reason why, in our disunity, the Philippines’ economic, political, and social fabric is in disarray with the result of having mass poverty for the greater number of Filipinos? Could this be a reason why, even if we love our motherland, many of us choose overseas greener pastures to the extent of allowing the current flag to be bruised in disrespect like the Oxnard incident?

To solve the Philippines’ disarrayed situation, do we need to rally behind another flag? #

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