This 120th could be among our last few Independence Day fetes. The Republic will soon be gone. It will become the colony of the giant neighbor. Acceptance, not resistance, will greet the subjugator.

We shrug at the bully’s militarization of our western waters. We ignore the escalating harassment of our sailors and fishermen right inside our 200-mile exclusive zone. Feeble talk of arming ourselves makes us forget our victory in the UN court. World sympathy for us would fade; they only respect a race that stands up for its rights.

The alien will infiltrate all levels of our politics, civics, academe, media, even black markets (smuggling, drugs, money laundering, etc.). In the end the red flag with gold stars will unfurl in public halls and plazas. Filipino vessels and airplanes must seek permission to cross our West Sea to other lands. Or else, they’d be blown up by missiles, fighters, and warships. Those already are stationed, unprotested by us, on reefs that the colonizer concreted into island fortresses in our maritime dominion and continental shelf. Filipino fishers in traditional grounds will be outlawed; their catch confiscated, they’d be jailed for poaching.

The Philippines will sink deep in debt to the foreign master. Loans frenziedly will be given out. Kickbacks by bureaucrats will be encouraged, as long as those are repaid in cash and sovereign surrender. So little would be left for actual works that piers and airports, rails and ferries, highways and bridges would be unusable. Every time Filipinos default on repayments, the overlord simply will take over the facilities. Like with other bribed governments, those forcibly would come under 99-year leases. Taxes, food, precious metals, and housemaids will be brought as tribute to the conqueror’s capital.

The political elite will collaborate with the occupiers. The country will be dismembered, not by region or culture, but along local dynastic jurisdictions. They will change the Constitution and Supreme Court, then perpetuate themselves in power. The national flag, anthem, patriotic pledge will be discouraged. Subservience and discord will be promoted. Dynasts will divide and conquer in behalf of the colonizer. They will tighten their control over local economies, from resorts to hardware stores, utilities to filling stations. Those who can will emigrate. The left-behinds will be the dynasts’ serfs.

The colonizer and collaborators will make concubines and slaves of our women. Fathers, sons, brothers, husbands will weep like women for what they did not fight for like men. The Republic will dissolve like a bubble. Lost forever.

* * *

Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).