I just wanted to get this off my chest.
I remember tanim bala years ago. The press and socmed would be literally screaming everyday on how incompetent PNoy’s admin was over NAIA staff placing bullets into luggage to extort tourists. I also remember the incredible traffic and how complaints would be amplified by the thousandfold, almost like shouting into a microphone so they could share how incompetent they thought PNoy was.
As much as I could empathize I could see however that the problems were clearly local. Tanim Bala was a NAIA problem, and as such should be resolved by NAIA authorities. Edsa traffic was an Edsa problem, not even a nationwide problem, and was therefore up to whoever was managing Edsa or the city as a whole. In fact it was clearly because people were buying so many cars as they had more money.
Meanwhile the economy was GREAT, the Philippines was actually loaning money to other countries. Diesel was P25/li, and for the first time in our lives Filipinos were seeing Senators and the highest of high powered people getting jailed for plunder.
Today, the jeepneys are about to launch a nation wide strike. Philippine seamen are about to lose their accreditation. And guess what, there is a video of NAIA staff IN THE ACT OF ACTUALLY STEALING money from a foreigner. Not just pretending to find a bullet, the guy is fetching it from their wallet and then pleading to the foreigner not to share the recording.
And where is the outrage? Where are the hundred thousand member facebook groups and twitter accounts that suddenly appeared out of nowhere with no other mandate than to supposedly ‘reveal the truth’ about the country’s leaders? Where are the screaming heads on radio that would spread the propaganda that we were being lied to, that the ‘oligarchs’ were going to take everything, 24 hours a day, day after day?
I write about this now because I remember clearly back then wondering if people are actually going to learn. Those people who laughed and mocked Cory, PNoy, Leni and Mar – people who tried their best to improve their countrymen’s lives only to get spat on and ridiculed, their personal lives and those of their loved ones poked fun at, heckled, harrassed and jeered.
The people who voted for Duterte. The people who voted for Marcos. How can they show their faces in public. How can they look themselves in the mirror.