The "damaged" Filipino culture of today is said to be the product of 400 years of Spain and 50 years of Hollywood.

Spain brought us Christianity that bordered on the ritualistic, sometimes pagan rites and the almost deification of the clergy. The Spanish bureaucrats and the soldiers subjugated the tribes into small fiefdoms and then ruled them.

For 400 years, Filipinos - generation upon generation - were made to believe we were near slaves, incapable of governing ourselves and that not embracing their brand of Christianity was a one-way ticket to hell.

The Americans thought that we owed our independence and freedom from them. The Americans felt that they "liberated" the country from Spain by destroying the Spanish armada fleet in Manila Bay. Thereafter, after 400 years of Spanish oppression, a jubilant Filipino armed leader Emilio Aguinaldo declared the Philippine's independence from across his house balcony in historical Kawit, Cavite on June 12, 1898.

But the greedy Americans were not to easily give up this country which became the second most progressive nation in Asia (next to Japan). We were then an extension of American interests in Asia - a virtual fiefdom without its being called so. Regardless.

It was only when the Americans again "liberated" the country from the Japanese Imperial Forces in 1946 were we "granted" our true independence specifically on the 4th of July, America's own Freedom Day.

To the credit, then, of former president Diosdado Macapagal - that he changed the Philippine Independence Day celebration from July 4 to June 12 beginning 1962 - which is indeed the more appropriate date.

To her discredit, then, did current president Gloria Arroyo (ironically the daughter and political heir of Diosdado) somewhat desecrate the sanctity of the June 12 date - by having Philippine Independence Day observed through a non-working holiday edict celebrated this Monday, June 9.

GMA had trivialized the nationalist ideals of generations who died to get our own Philippine flag of independence by such a move - a gambit in favor of her Gloria Economics. How a long weekend can trigger a more massive jerk on GDP-economic activities escapes us right now.

But even if true, we are true-blue sentimentalists, when it comes to nationalist symbols. And we can't buy her new Gloria Values of the economist type in lieu of dates of liberation.

Dates aside, how free indeed are we now as to say we can truly celebrate our Independence Day?

The first freedom is the freedom to live - and therefore freedom from want - otherwise the idea of freedom is merely an abstract concept for Juan de la Cruz.

For indeed a free man must have both freedoms - economic freedom and political freedom.

Millions wallow below the poverty line and the nation lives in an inverted pyramid where 10% of the population controls 90% of the nation's wealth. It is a social volcano waiting for its time to erupt.

For Filipinos to be economically free, he must be either gainfully employed or runs his own business as entrepreneur. In a capital starved country like ours, the savings rate versus the GDP is simply not there - for the simple reason that everything Juan de la Cruz earns he consumes for his sustenance. Very often, he even goes to debt because his expenditures exceed his income. Usually, he ends with your infamous usurer and not all of them wear turbans, we tell you true.

He cannot go into business because the Banking System does not always give credit where credit is due. For instance, the criteria for extending loans to business - often called the "three C of credit" automatically exclude the poor Juan de la Cruz from the matrix.

For Juan de la Cruz does not have the first C: "collateral" - he often lives in a shanty or a dwelling he does not own; his appliances under financing terms. He does not have the (second C) - "capacity to pay" and his (third C) "character" - requires a co-maker who is often unavailable or is over-borrowed himself.

The Banking system apparently only gives credit to those who don't need it. It has therefore become unwittingly an instrument in the perpetuation of the inequality of wealth distribution and opportunity.

Others look at Education as the golden goose that lays the eggs. But how many can afford Philippine education today?

Only one out of the ten students who enter Grade One will ever get to finish College - due to economic and other reasons. So therefore, the expensive Government program of giving free elementary and high school education is laid to waste then. Without a college diploma, at least, who will employ him?

And even with a college diploma in tow, he joins the ranks of the 700,000 new graduates every year - searching for scarce jobs - competing among themselves and the unemployed. It is no wonder that the Department of Foreign Affairs approves papers of 1 million Filipinos every year to get a chance for them to be workers in a land not our own.

Are we economically free, therefore? Politically free?

Are we an independent country when people who have the money - buy peoples' votes; those who have the guns terrorize the results of the election and those who have the political clout force-command votes and coerce people to vote like slaves without will and power?

Are we free when the Executive Department - execute all legal stumbling blocks to prevent the questioning of the morality and the ethics of their moves? Are we free when a Lower House - largely through economic largesse and political blackmail can no longer think like free legislators and a Senate that is famous for investigations and only a few sound laws?

Are we free with the snail's pace of justice and with many of the courts manned by judges derided as "hoodlums in robes?" Can a Justice system thrive with such a miniscule budget while the Military gets at least P50 billion per year for Modernization (on top of its gargantuan budget)?

Are we really free when some Media men themselves sell their press badge and dignity for thirty pieces of very dirty silver? Who will give us that freedom of choice of freedom of thought?

Are we free when over 800 men (activists, peasant leaders, labor heads, media men, men of the cloth) are murdered extra-judicially without justice being served?

Are we free when the country is dubbed the second most dangerous place for media men outside of war-torn Iraq? Are we "worse than free," as Vergel Santos' famous book is titled?

Our hard-earned democracy - fought for and defended from Mactan to Balintawak to Bataan and Corregidor, Tirad Pass and EDSA - is a work-in-progress. But we just work on it like laggards. Such a pity.

Let us henceforth value our independence by acting like we are free. Shall we?

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