Reading the news about Senator Miriam, I was amused
to read the senator’s mother responding (I imagined in the same patented deadpan
manner of the senator) with ‘We all have to go sometime’.
Yes, go we all must, sometime.
In politics It’s been a while since any drastic
change had been seen in the landscape and even then it’s still the same old,
same old: Marcos, Aquino, Macapagal, Angara, Estrada, Binay, Cayetano, Guingona
and list goes on with no less than one hundred fifty (150) dynasties lording it
over the archipelago for as long as forever.
Something has got to give after all that time and this
PDAF scam seem to have started a crack at the political seams. You can almost
hear Bob Dylan croon: Come senators, congressmen please heed the call, don’t
stand in the doorway; don’t block up the hall; for he who gets hurt would be he
who has stalled; there’s a battle outside and it’s raging (1964,Columbia
records).
The first batch in the scandal had turned themselves
in voluntary, setting the tone for the orderly evaluation and investigation
into the scam. If not for anything else, we have to commend senators Revilla
and Estrada for facing the charges before them. Never mind the lachrymose,
silly, semi-Neanderthal stunt before the hallowed halls of the senate, both had
all the chances to fly the coup but chose to man up and stand trial. Former
president now Manila Mayor Estrada may have had a hand in what transpired, if
not directly, surely by example with the bravado he himself displayed in his
own hour of desperation.
This dictates a new brand of statesmanship unlike
those displayed by senators Lacson and Honasan. And somebody even made a film
based on the Lacson experience as if it had some redeeming value. So the
question begging to be asked is will senator Honasan once again turn fugitive?
He is on the list in an item I read and any day could be the subject of an
arrest warrant. If he runs, do we just say ‘so what’s new?’
On the other hand, will the judiciary complement
the gestures by speeding up the trial? How long will the senators suffer the
indignities heaped on them if they are truly innocent? It seems like this
early, judicial experts are already conditioning the public that the trial is
going to take a long, long while.
But how complicated is this case? Isn’t it just a
question of did they or didn’t they benefit from misappropriation of public
funds. To me it looks as simple as the equation where their assets, including
that of their immediate family and trusted associates approximating if not
equal to their declared income.
Is it really possible that despite all the check
and balance, including the Commission on Audit, Janet Lim-Napoles can merely insert
harmonic stupidity in to the progression formula of how to dupe the government
and with impunity, had simply walked to the bank in the last ten years or so?
These are interesting times; the citizenry has
turned restless weighed down by the general poverty amidst supposed stellar
economic performance of the country. (Do you really buy this GNP bullshit?)The
biggest source of ‘non-inclusive growth’ immediately obvious is the slave wage
dispensed to a population (burdened or gifted?) with a largely
uneducated/unskilled labor surplus. Add to this injustice, contractualization
along with the blind eye of the regulators thus one doesn’t have to look far
why poverty has not moved an inch. I cannot for the life of me understand how the
labor force (about 40M) where almost half work in construction have not
benefitted from such a bonanza of the massive construction movement resulting
to an RFO inventory of over 20,00 units (RFO is an industry on its own if you
haven’t heard) in MM alone? In a recent development, some lawmakers are up in
arms of how some of our country men working as domestic helpers in Singapore
are displayed in a mall and auctioned in a throwback to the days of Caribbean
slave traders. Is it any better here?
Then there is the lack of infrastructure, killer
taxes, and a multitude of obstacles and clearances that pour cold water on
wanna be entreprenuers.
What about peace and order in the streets? Ask a
policeman if you can find one.
From the south, the citizenry is also concerned
with the rehabilitation the victims of ‘Yolanda’ where it is largely believed
that relief goods have teemed in the billions of dollars but where no tangible
action can be discerned. Is there?
Further out, the Chinese are threatening the
boundaries of the country leaving people dependent on the sea to suffer and
obliterating any chance for the country to be energy independent consequently
its citizens out of poverty. The Pabaon scandal in the AFP seemed to have died
but its result where we are unable to defend ourselves is much more manifest with
the Chinese encounter because of the diversion of funds supposed for the armed
force modernization. General Almonte (ret) came out with a piece of advice on
how to handle the China crisis (sound like band). I think he said something
like a citizen to citizen approach on face book? It read like a joke but if
it’s all the hope we have, God help us.
What about the Maguindanao Massacre?
How things are resolved today will shape the
future.
Yes even the search for our national artist from whom
our culture develops. So why is Joey Smith not nominated?
We know where everything is located and what needs
ot be done; the skeleton in the closet, the woods in the hands of illegal
loggers, rice with the cartel, drugs everywhere, all the monies in the hands of
the Forbes magazine lister, (oh and JLN) and political power in the 150
dynasties scattered around the archipelago. The dysfunction can well be fixed,
well maybe not for this generation but surely for the next at least.
Imagine a future where education is free, housing
really affordable, food and medicine easily accessible, an impartial and swift judicial
system and every citizen enjoying peace.
We might never know if PNoy set out the groundswell
for change happening but we are sure he somehow lit the spark. In turn it is
now every Pinoy’s duty to see to the institution of change: urge the courts to
rule decisively and swiftly on the PDAF scam and other cases; hasten the
rehabilitation of Yolanda victims; pass to law the anti-dynasty bill; strict
implementation of wage laws with probably another twenty on the list.
There’s a better future ahead, the signs are
getting clearer by the day. What we need is for everyone to invest in that
vision.
