So according to the latest Pulse Asia “survey”, “three out of five” Filipinos reportedly believe pork barrel funds are routinely misused — even under Mr Daang Matuwid himself, President Benigno Simeon “BS” Aquino III.
This just illustrates the fundamental issue with Filipinos.
Problems — and their obvious solutions — stare Filipinos in their faces year in and year out and everyday in between. Yet there is hardly any evidence that Filipinos possess the will to lift a finger to face off with these problems intelligently. Walk down a street in sidewalk-vendor-choked Baclaran and you will only wonder about the piles of garbage everywhere that everyone else around you seems oblivious to. And you wonder, between you and all the rest around you, who the normal ones really are. Or take the unchanging traffic situation in EDSA. It is worsening, but the problem behind that worsening is the one I refer to as unchanging — the manner with which buses clamber over one another across several lanes to load and unload passengers at key junctions across this vital and iconic land artery. Don’t even get us started on Manila’s floods and its many obvious causes. The way Filipinos happily shit on their own backyard then rant and gnash their teeth over the stench is quite amusing.
Indeed, Filipinos routinely shit on their own backyards.
That, in essence, is what the whole stink surrounding the pork barrel mess that is paralysing Philippine governance is all about. Filipino Politicians are the shit on Filipinos’ backyard. And who deposited them there? Good question.
Sit on this and rotate: Filipino voters exercising their democratic rights
This is a whole new different epoch in Philippine politics. There is no longer a coherent “opposition” to which one can look to for a White Knight. This is because the stench of pork barrel scandal emanates from all regardless of the partisan colours one or the other flies. If I were President BS Aquino, I’d drop the whole yellow-shirted “L” hand gesture act. Perceptions of moral ascendancy amongst politicians on the bases of slogans, hand gestures, and shirt colours no longer resonate. Filipinos have always asserted that politicians are all the same. This time when they do say so, it seems they really mean it.
Or do they?
It’s hard to bet on a better outcome in the next elections on the basis of yet another assumption that Filipinos may have learned something from the latest corruption “scandal”. When in our history, after all, have Filipinos exhibited an ability to choose a course of action on the basis of some solid learning?
The way Filipinos have elected the same sorts of bozos again and againillustrates just how flat their learning curve really is. Indeed, Raquel Welch was said to have said:
You can’t expect different results while doing the same thing again and again.
Or was that Albert Einstein?
Whatever. If it is “good leadership” Filipinos need in order to surmount their problems and implement the obvious solutions, then we are really in a bind — because we rely on the very source of the problem — the Filipino Vote — to select that leader we need. We also rely on the Filipino Vote to select “representation” in the crafting of the country’s laws. And we rely on the Filipino Vote to express our displeasure when those leaders and representatives fail at doing the job they were supposed to do.
So much for the obvious solutions.
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