It’s been a slow and agonizing wasting away with the current crop of incompetent and corrupt empathy-devoid bozos that fill the political arena here in the country widely known as the Sick Man of Asia. This decaying remittance-transfusion-sustained corpse of a society/economy, the semblance of life being just the wiggling movement of infesting maggots under its easily butt-hurt Pinoy-pride skin, has survived for many decades since its independence from colonial masters. But that’s just about what constitutes many Filipinos’ dreams – mere survival. Ordinary Pinoys are no better than rats and cockroaches surviving on crap in damp stinking sewers, barely making it from one typhoon to another.
The big question is – why are Pinoys putting up with a system and leadership rotten to the core with outright audacious incompetence and corruption? Look at the slow-as-a-snail judicial system, with no light at the end of the tunnel for victims of massacres and heinous crimes; the jammed-up executive branch, which cannot seem to spend money without any scandal or irregularity involved; and the pork-hungry legislative body, which is just wasting tax payer’s money creating laws that if not useless (like renaming roads) are only meant to benefit themselves and those who funded their run for office.
Fixing a Broken System
We have here a case of a broken political and economic system that is run and populated by a dysfunctional people. How do we fix something that is broken? Take for example a car. If one’s dilapidated car requires major repairs every month costing tens of thousands of pesos with parts breaking down every now and then, common sense dictates that we simply retire it as scrap and just buy a new one. Instead of the regular repair costs, we can then channel the money to monthly installments – minus all the trouble, risks and headaches.
The same goes for computers. When a part of a desktop PC such as the power supply breaks down, we do not try to open the broken component and figure out what’s wrong. It would be a waste of time. Plug-and-play computer parts are now cheap enough to simply be replaced with a new one. And if the entire PC is totally outdated, hangs intermittently, and is infected with viruses, we can just discard the whole unit and replace it just the same.
Often times, fixing a broken system is best done not by debugging and troubleshooting it, but by simple replacement with a new and better functional one.
Death of the Philippines as We Know It
A horse that has accidentally broken its leg in the midst of a long treacherous journey is no longer useful. The owner would usually just have to say goodbye to an old friend that has served him well and do the merciful act of putting it out of its misery.
In like manner, what the Sick Man of Asia needs is a quick and merciful death, otherwise known as euthanasia. A bullet to the temple while fast asleep is actually painless; a much better alternative to a long and torturous ordeal in agonizing pain. In the end, the current system in this country will be dead meat anyway – it’s just a matter of time. So why don’t we just get it over with FAST?
Many have espoused the idea of having some first-world neighbor nuking this country or its messed up capital so we can simply start from scratch. Other than being a rather practically improbable proposition, this is mostly just a sigh of exasperation from a people too tired and weary of the hardships they have been made to endure as inhabitants of P.I. (pun? you decide) – a failed experiment on freedom-loving democracy and its anti-competition elite-oligarchy-centric capitalist economy.
How about Metro Manila? Well, fixing Metro Manila has been the evasive holy grail of Filipino management and leadership. Achieving such would provide undeniable proof of competence and political will. To date, no president has by far been able to solve the puzzle of traffic, squatters, floods, pollution, and overall choking chaos of this metropolis that is only getting worse by the day (after APEC, it’s the dreaded Christmas shopping season in the offing).
The best thing to do is to simply create a new capital city from scratch and have it designed and constructed from the ground up (drainage, underground fiber optics, subway system, and all) by the best urban planners this modern age has to offer (BTW, Australians seem to be bloody good).
While we contemplate and decide on whom to choose as the next leaders of this country, try considering who among them can bring about the MAXIMUM amount of change. They are your pawns in your chess battle plan towards bringing your country to what you envision it to be. You can strike off of your shopping list those names that represent the “tuloy ang ligaya” biz-as-usual status quo. What we need are radical game-changing leaders who can bring about the speediest Death to the Philippines as we know it:
- Death of unabated crime and lack of discipline on the streets and sidewalks, day or night.
- Death of the incorrigible state of corruption in Philippine politics, inducing politicians to pocket millions as ROI for their election campaign spending.
- Death of an obsolete, progress-hindering, incompetence- and corruption-coddling Constitution by/for/of a heartless elitist oligarchy.
- Death of Metro Manila’s squatter, eyesore, and illegal peddler infestation through iron-fisted imposition of discipline and zero-tolerance leadership.
The best candidate is one who will send the current form of R.P. to its “R.I.P.”-labeled grave.
Now if no one is up for the challenge, there’s always China in our backyard ready to take the helm of a defenseless country (high-speed inter-island bullet trains anyone?). Or there’s our ever faithful ally Uncle Sam who may be open to welcoming us back to their fold (51st state of U.S. anyone?). But for sure deeply ingrained Pinoy pride will keep anything close to these options from ever happening.
A New Beginning
Death with its bloody aftermath is not a beautiful sight. However, what is death but a transition from one state to another? Having studied numerous near-death experiences (NDE’s) myself, I see death to often bring about beauty in the end, the same way a caterpillar dries up in a cocoon to come out as a butterfly; the way a fruit falls, decays and yet springs forth with seeds of new life; and the way the mythical Phoenix rises from its ashes.
Die my country to your old self, and awaken in newness of life. We as enlightened Filipinos here may be labeled radical rebels in our quest for change, but as history always goes to show – “the rebels of today are the heroes of tomorrow.” Now who’s with me in facing this nation’s death with a loud united echoing battle cry… “Bring it on!” ?
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