IN the late 1980s, at the Harvard Kennedy School, quite a few of our colleagues were veterans of political turbulence from South America, Africa and the Middle East, where governments fall with the regularity of our typhoons — they offered a curriculum far more vivid than anything in our syllabus. Over brown-bag lunches, they conducted blow-by-blow tutorials on how revolutions, coups d’état, putsches and every imaginable extra-constitutional maneuver are actually managed.

And yes, these convulsions do topple regimes. They do install new ones. But beneath the romance and rhetoric lies a brutal constant: the ordinary citizen — Muhammad, Jamil, Ofedie — is almost always the casualty. Revolutions crown victors but bury the nameless. The slogans are noble; the body counts are not.

Rewards for survivors – Harvard’s curious role

Those who survive the upheavals, from either side, rarely go home empty-handed. They collect ambassadorships, appointed to cabinet posts they are barely trained for, receive mansions with Ferraris in the garage as if they were medals of valor. And then, of course, there are those curious cases where former revolutionaries are “sent” to Harvard.

Not as a prize, far from it. But because history has shown a quiet logic: victorious rebels must undergo metamorphosis. A guerrilla commander who once managed platoons in the mountains must now manage ministries, budgets and the machinery of the modern state. That is where Harvard enters — not as an ivory tower, but as a diplomatic laundromat. Harvard teaches the grammar of statecraft: public finance, diplomacy, negotiation, governance, and pairing the correct wine with the right food, etc.

It is also part of the post-conflict ritual favored by Western and multilateral agencies. They prefer their new partners housebroken, credentialed, and able to pronounce “macroeconomic restructuring” without blinking — and eat at McDonalds without the rice. A year at the Kennedy School transforms insurgents into policymakers with global rolodexes and stylish double-breasted blue blazers. Harvard gets prestige; the revolutionaries get legitimacy. Everyone gets a photo-op.

Why we landed in Cambridge

But in my case and Alex “Babes” Flores’ — I have long suspected a more local logic. Sending us to Harvard was less about polishing our skills and more about temporarily exiling potential political rivals. After all, my last government assignment before grad-school was that of Minister Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr.’s deputy minister replacing Marcos holdovers with hastily appointed OICs, some of whom were more enthusiastic than competent.

What better way to neutralize a politically inconvenient reformer than to ship him off to Cambridge, Massachusetts, a fellowship, a year’s stipend, the seductive illusion of meritocracy and bragging rights! And Babes may have stepped into the toes of several generals. A bemedaled colonel and a loyal participant in the winning side of EDSA I, we absorbed our lunchtime revolution seminars with missionary zeal. Alex would often declare — without irony — that if destiny required, he now knew exactly how to apply the arcana of regime change. Yet even in these spirited discussions, one haunting question etched itself into our collective consciousness: If you overthrow a regime and succeed - who runs the trains the morning after? That question separated dreamy revolutionaries from actual nation-builders. And should we fail this time, there’s always Primo Arambulo — our bow-tied, cigar-puffing Fil-Am contemporary, equal parts martinet and polymath, offering exile bed-spaces in his Maryland manor like a benevolent landlord of lost patriots.

When power meets the real world: cautionary tales

Our Cambridge experiences were not academic abstractions. They were foreshadowings. One fellow student — a charismatic politician from Ecuador — returned home, ascended to the presidency, then was promptly incarcerated for anomalies. Last we heard, he was exiled back to America, his presidency reduced to a cautionary footnote.

Another peer, an Islamic governor from Kaduna state in Nigeria, lived his Harvard years in polygamous splendor, each of his wives equipped with a BMW in the Peabody Terrace parking lot. On weekends he would jet off to London to play polo with Prince (now King) Charles.

These classmates were strictly nonrevolutionaries, yet their trajectories eerily mirror the beneficiaries of our present-day flood control corruption — men who have not yet endured a revolution but already behaving like survivors of one. Comfortable in their villas in Portugal, Paris and Forbes Park, they lounge as if the country’s suffering were events between chukkers or a Superbowl intermission.

Precondition to a PH upheaval

Which brings us to this week’s “trillion-peso march” and the question capturing our national imagination: Quo vadis, Filipinas? At the very least, such a mobilization should spark the swift jailing of senators, congressmen, bureaucrats, and the contractors who masterminded this grand heist — as a crucial build-up towards the tipping point.

In a country where the legal path to a China-style remedy — swift execution — or the North Korean custom of jailing relatives to the second degree of consanguinity is unavailable, the next best option is full restitution. Every peso stolen, every kilometer of asphalt overpriced, every Birkin and Gucci bag bought with public funds, every Rolex and Patek Philippe flaunted as trophies of impunity, the Gulfstream 350 and yes — because symbols matter — the Paraiba Tourmaline ring. All must be returned to the plundered nation.

These prescriptions are not academic indulgences. They arise from lived experience — from the hard lessons Babes, Primo and I absorbed at Harvard, listening to men and women who watched their countries implode and claw their way back. From them we learned a simple truth: Toppling a regime is easy; governing a nation is the real revolution. And regardless of how loud the streets become, the trains must still run the morning after.

The alternatives

The pathways ahead — constitutional, extra-constitutional, violent, nonviolent, reformist, dystopian, or merely farcical — will be dissected in my coming columns. Yet whatever form transition takes, any credible national program must contain one nonnegotiable proviso: systemic reforms. Not the cosmetic tinkering Congress peddles, but real structural correction — the very demands citizens have raised long before legislators perverted the process to protect themselves.

Foremost among these is the passage of a genuine anti-political dynasty law, not the pantomime version that conveniently exempts its authors. Equally vital is revising the 1987 Constitution, trading our dysfunctional unitary-presidential system for a parliamentary-federal model where accountability is unambiguous, incompetence rejected, and authority acquired by merit, not heredity — with dynasts firmly prohibited from steering the overhaul itself.

Only after the plebiscite’s ratification can Marcos and Sara depart — toward imprisonment or exile, at the people’s pleasure — carrying a sliver of dignity for having midwifed, by design or sheer accident, a more coherent constitutional order. And not before then! Nations do not rise because they shout the loudest, but because they choose the hard path when cowardice is easier. The trillion-peso march may ignite a reckoning, but reckoning alone does not shape destiny. Destiny is forged when a people, betrayed too often, finally decide that this time the thieves will not write the ending.

In the end, the question is no longer who falls, but who dares run the trains after the wreckage and who has the courage to rebuild a nation worthy of their arrival.

The Senate President crowed yesterday that the party he nominally coheads, PDP-Laban, has a “pleasant problem” — too many potential senatorial candidates. Koko Pimentel’s estimate is they have up to 20 possible choices for the 12-person slate for the 2019 senatorial race. But his list includes the five administration-affiliated senatorial incumbents up for reelection next year. This is a group that has made noises that, much as it prefers to remain in the administration camp, it is unhappy with the way PDP-Laban has been designating its local leaders and candidates, and therefore prefers to strike out on its own, perhaps in alliance with the other administration (regional) party, Hugpong ng Pagbabago, headed by the President’s daughter and current Davao City mayor, Sara Duterte.

Setting aside, then, the five-person “Force,” the administration-oriented but not PDP-friendly reelectionists (Nancy Binay, Sonny Angara, Cynthia Villar, Grace Poe, and JV Ejercito), what Koko’s crowing over is a mixed bag. Some of them have been floated by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez (with whom Mayor Duterte clashed in recent months): six representatives (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who is in her last term in the House of Representatives; Albee Benitez, Karlo Nograles, Rey Umali, Geraldine Roman, and Zajid Mangudadatu), three Cabinet members (Bong Go, Harry Roque, and Francis Tolentino), and two other officials (Mocha Uson and Ronald dela Rosa), which still only adds up to 11 possible candidates (who are the missing three?).

Of all of these, the “Force” reelectionists are only fair-weather allies of the present dispensation; their setting themselves apart is about much more than the mess PDP-Laban made in, say, San Juan where support for the Zamoras makes it extremely unattractive for JV Ejercito to consider being in the same slate. Their cohesion is about thinking ahead: Creating the nucleus for the main coalition to beat in the 2022 presidential election. The contingent of congressmen and congresswomen who could become candidates for the Senate, however, seems more a means to kick the Speaker’s rivals upstairs (at least in the case of Benitez and Arroyo) and pad the candidates’ list with token but sacrificial candidates, a similar situation to the executive officials being mentioned as possible candidates (of the executive officials, only Go seems viable, but making him run would deprive the President of the man who actually runs the executive department, and would be a clear signal that the administration is shifting to a post-term protection attitude instead of the more ambitious system-change mode it’s been on, so far).

Vice President Leni Robredo has been more circumspect, saying she’s not sure the Liberal Party can even muster a full slate. The party chair, Kiko Pangilinan, denied that a list circulating online (incumbent Bam Aquino, former senators Mar Roxas, Jun Magsaysay, TG Guingona, current and former representatives Jose Christopher Belmonte, Kaka Bag-ao, Edcel Lagman, Raul Daza, Gary Alejano and Erin Tañada, former governor Eddie Panlilio and Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña) had any basis in fact.

What both lists have in common is they could be surveys-on-the-cheap, trial balloons to get the public pulse. Until the 17th Congress reconvenes briefly from May 14 to June 1 for the tail end of its second regular session (only to adjourn sine die until the third regular session begins on July 23), it has nothing much to do. Except, that is, for the barangay elections in May, after a last-ditch effort by the House to postpone them yet again to October failed.

Names can be floated but the real signal will come in July, when the President mounts the rostrum and calls for the big push for a new constitution—or not. Connected to this would be whether the Supreme Court disposes of its own chief, which would spare the Senate—and thus, free up the legislative calendar—to consider Charter change instead of an impeachment trial. In the meantime, what congressmen do seem abuzz over is an unrefusable invitation to the Palace tomorrow — to mark Arroyo’s birthday. An event possibly pregnant with meaning.

Here’s a striking statement about love shared with me by an English college mentor. “Love knows no grammar. How it works can’t be measured by any parts or figures of speech. It goes beyond the literate and illiterate. The sad reality is that, even a fool who has got no philosophy is not spared of its harsh reality.” After almost three decades, I reminded him through a private message of his words. Here’s what he said. “Thank you, Jord. This statement about love is searing to the heart. And, yes, fools do fall for it too. But I thought that we as well speak of the beauty that it gives and not so much focus on the harsh realities. After all, our country has had enough of the negativities.” Thank you, dearest Sir Eugene.

In these decisive times when our nation trembles under the weight of corruption, inequality, and disillusionment, it is you―the youth, burning with idealism, courage, and an unyielding sense of right―who must stand at the forefront of CHANGE. The future of the Philippines hangs in the balance, calling not for silence or apathy, but for unity, conviction, and action. Let your dreams be the spark that ignites renewal; let your voices thunder against injustice; let your hands build the nation our forebears envisioned but never fulfilled. Now is the hour to awaken, to rise, and to lead the march toward a just and transformed Philippines.

Remember, the pages of our history resound with the triumphs of youth who dared to dream and act. From the Propagandists who wielded the pen against tyranny to the Katipuneros who took up arms for freedom, it was always the young who ignited revolutions and rebuilt nations. As Dr. Jose Rizal declared, “The youth is the hope of our motherland,” but that hope is not a gift to be passively claimed; it is a duty to be earned through courage and purpose.

Today’s generation must transform awareness into action―to confront corruption with integrity, to challenge inequality with empathy, and to counter apathy with participation. The time for mere commentary has passed. What the nation demands now is commitment, creativity, and collective resolve. When the youth stand united in conscience and conviction, no obstacle is insurmountable, no reform impossible. The power to redeem the nation’s promise lies not in the hands of the few, but in the awakened spirit of the many. Rise, therefore, as one generation with one objective―to forge a Philippines worthy of its people’s deepest hopes. And to those who were once the torchbearers of youth but have since laid down their fire―hear this call.

The nation does not forget its veterans of hope, those who once believed that change was possible but have since grown weary in the long twilight of disappointment. Thus far history grants no sanctuary to resignation. It demands of every generation the same unrelenting duty―to defend what is right, to confront what is wrong, and to labor still for what remains unfinished.

Now is the moment to rise again. Let not caution disguise itself as wisdom, nor comfort as peace. The courage that once stirred your youth still flickers within; rekindle it, and let it burn anew for the sake of those who follow. Your experience, tempered by time, must now join hands with the fervor of the young - to guide, to mentor, to strengthen.

Together, let the wisdom of the seasoned and the passion of the rising coalesce into a single, indomitable force for renewal. For the task of nation-building is not bound by age, but by conviction. The call of the motherland resounds to all who still believe that the story of the Filipino is not yet complete―and that redemption, though delayed, is still within our grasp if only we choose to act once more. And to those whose hands have long gripped the levers of power―hardened by privilege, dulled by entitlement―hear this with clarity: the era of self-preservation must yield to the dawn of selfless service.

The nation can no longer afford leaders who mistake possession for stewardship, nor governance for dominion. The time has come to relinquish the throne of complacency and make way for the custodians of vision, courage, and renewal.

To step aside is not to surrender, but to honor the sacred rhythm of nationhood―to allow new voices, new hearts, and new minds to breathe life into institutions that have grown stale from neglect. True leadership is an act of stewardship, and stewardship demands humility―to know when to lead, and when to pass the torch. Those who have ruled long enough must now become mentors, not masters; guides, not gatekeepers.

To the youth who will inherit this burden and blessing alike, the call is equally profound. Lead not with arrogance, but with awareness; not with impulse, but with integrity. Let optimism be your discipline―a conscious act of faith in the nation’s capacity to rise again. Lead with inclusivity that unites rather than divides, with courage that reforms rather than destroys, and with resilience that endures when hope seems frail.

For the measure of a new generation’s greatness lies not in its defiance alone, but in its wisdom to build where others have failed. Let your leadership become the living testament that the Philippines, once disillusioned, has learned at last to believe again―through you.

Now, the Filipino youth stand at a defining crossroad of history. The echoes of the past and the murmurs of the future converge upon this moment, and in your hands rests the fragile, however formidable promise of a nation reborn. You are the inheritors of unfinished dreams and the architects of what is yet to be. United in thought and deed, strengthened by the wisdom of history and the fire of conviction, you possess the power to shape a Philippines anchored in justice, animated by democracy, and sustained by the collective flourishing of its people.

The mantle of responsibility has passed to you. Do not falter beneath its weight; bear it with courage, for it is through your resolve that the nation will rise from the ruins of complacency. Let your unity transcend boundaries of region, class, and creed. Let your integrity redefine leadership, and your compassion restore faith in the Filipino spirit.

This is your hour. Let this narrative be not merely a call to awaken, but a solemn commitment―to the country that nurtures you, to the people who believe in you, and to the generations who will follow your example. Stand firm, for you are the heartbeat of a nation yearning to live with dignity once more. Speak right and shine!

Rise, Filipino youth, and let history remember that when your time came ―you stood unwavering, and the nation moved forward.