By: Gilbert Pilayre
THE SHATTERED ROOM: FANON, THE PHILIPPINE SENATE AND THE ORGY OF IMPUNITY
What happened on May 13, 2026, at the Senate of the Philippines is a kind of test of the kind of people and culture we have. This culture of impunity is very much alive in this country who is proud to be Christian and English-speaking at the same time. Having such qualities seems a kind of shield that would exempt us from being accountable. But only in our minds
Much like the Jews who think of themselves as the “Chosen People,” we carry this mentality of being “special”. We can do whatever we want because we are special. WRONG! True freedom is never a state of total isolation; it is deeply intertwined with the concept of personal responsibility. When we have the liberty to choose our own path, we must also accept ownership of the consequences that follow those choices. The truest expression of freedom lies in our ability to intentionally govern ourselves and contribute positively to the world around us.
By bypassing due process, the actions of the Duterte administration undermined the core institutional checks and balances designed to protect citizens from state overreach. International human rights organizations consistently argued that state-sanctioned violence erodes the very foundation of legal accountability. True justice requires that any government action remain bound by the rule of law, ensuring that every individual is granted a fair trial. When extrajudicial measures replace formal legal proceedings, it creates a culture of impunity that silences dissent and weakens democratic institutions. Ultimately, addressing these issues is essential for restoring public trust in the legal framework and healing the social fabric of the nation.
We must admire the sheer efficiency of the Duterte presidency; instead of wasting time uniting the nation, he and his minions graciously streamlined the process by breaking it apart and putting its sovereignty up for a flash sale.
As a result, we lost our edge in almost every area of business and production. Our neighbors capitalized on our own institutions, like the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Today, we find ourselves importing rice from the very nations whose students we used to train.
Once upon a time, our economy was second only to Japan’s. Today, Vietnam – a nation devastated by proxy war in the mid-20th century is already producing electric vehicles. Meanwhile, we, whose rich natural resources cannot even produce a single bar of steel, despite having vast ore deposits deep within our soil that are simply extracted by multinational and transnational corporations aided by our corrupt leaders.
We can put into context what shaped the Filipino psyche. Education in the Philippines is fundamentally shaped by colonialism, class inequality, and the semi-colonial and semi-feudal social order. One can easily see that in the way a Filipino behaves, though not all, amid white people. Franz Fanon, a Martinican psychiatrist, and revolutionary writer whose work became deeply influential in anti-colonial movements, critical theory, psychology, and post-colonial studies. He said: In a homogenous colonial environment. A person of color simply is. But the moment they enter a white space; they are forced to see themselves from the outside. Fanon describes this as being “shattered” and pieced back together as an object. Under the collective gaze of a white room, the colonized person is stripped of his/her individual humanity. They cease to be a lawyer, a student, or a writer; they are reduced entirely to their skin. He called this epidermalization – the societal definition of a person based purely on their biological appearance. The person in the room becomes acutely aware of every gesture. They feel the crushing weight of history. He argued that colonialism constantly tells the colonized that they are backward, uncivilized, irrational, or inferior. Over time, many begin to internalize these judgments. One of the most famous themes is that the colored individual is forced to see itself through the eyes of the colonizer. In Black Skin, White Masks, he explores how language itself becomes a marker of power. Speaking the colonizer’s language “correctly” becomes associated with intelligence and worth, while native identity is degraded. We are dehumanized. This dehumanization is not accidental; Fanon saw it as necessary for colonial control. Fanon believed that beneath submission there often exists accumulated rage. It is from this source that fascistic elements of society banked on. Hitler points at the Jews. Mr. Duterte points at oligarchs, Marcos Sr, too. Yet, they end up at forming their own. And the rest turned into an orgy of murder and gross violations of the law and human rights.
Fugitive Senator Ronaldo Dela Rosa (photo credits from ABS-CBN)
Those who would give light must endure burning.
-Viktor Frankl