OUR MESSY POLITICS
The year has just started and it seems we are off to a rough start.
The resumption of the Senate Hearings into the flood control mess has merely scratched the surface and produced no significant results and concrete answers to questions nagging people’s minds.
Our legislators are busy filing impeachment complaints one after the other while defending their partisan affiliations.
Critics are being hailed to court and fellow legislators who speak up and go against majority convenience are threatened with suspensions and ethics complaints.
Whistleblowers become subjects of counterattacks in what could be seen as an attempt to silence them and taint their motives.
Rumors of a Speakerahip Coup in the Senate have persisted and could slowly be taking shape.The Lower House is not spared from political wrangling and bickering either.
All of these are happening while oil prices are skyrocketing and fuel pump prices now hover @Php60/ ltr. levels.The tourism sector is hemorrhaging from dropping tourist arrivals and the economy is not performing well as shown by weak stock market trading and other indicators such as our plunging peso to dollar exchange rate.
From top to bottom, everywhere we look, we are confronted by issues that reek of poor governance and mismanagement.
Locally we are faced with the challenges of daily life as we grapple with the high costs of living. Meat and fish products are beyond reach of the average daily wage earner while illegal drugs remain rampant and petty crimes are on the rise.
While authorities and the leadership will always dispute this, the reality on the ground speaks for itself.
Yet what have our leaders done? We are regaled by media hypes of awards and recognition by questionable award bodies unheard of.
Our local leaders are busy preparing for the next elections that even the most basic of services are forgotten.
True we have assistance mechanisms like AKAP, 4Ps and other financial aid, but it is promoting a culture of mendicancy rather than self-sufficiency.
Worse, despite our existing laws against using aid programs for political ends, the opposite is true. Politicians just circumvent our laws to gain patronage because most often we fail in enforcing them.
We can go on and on with our litany of woes but what can we do?
Are we feeling too hopeless, too weak to fight on or simply resigned to our fate?
The wolves and crocodiles have lorded it over that the lambs have been silent long enough.
Yet beware for our people’s silence could be anger slowly building up. How far we are willing to endure and suffer depends on how quickly we can change our mindsets from subservience and submission into real courage and independence!