Taking a plane at Domestic Terminal 4 for Puerto Princesa made me wonder why passengers need to pass several checkpoints.
First, as you enter the terminal, a security guard asks to see your ID and ticket. Then you go into the metal detector as your luggage goes through the X-ray machine. From there you proceed to the ground crew who ask you for an ID, understandable because tickets are no longer in vogue.
After checking in, you pass through another security guard who again asks for your ID along with your boarding pass. And then your hand-carried luggage, along with cellphone, belt, watch and shoes pass another X-ray scrutiny.
Having gone through all that, you amble your way into the crowded pre-departure area, looking for a seat. That too is difficult, not because there are far too many passengers compared to the number of seats, but because many of us have the bad habit of placing our hand-carried luggage in the next seat, or seats. Some even have the bad manners of laying their miserable corpus on an entire row of seats.
Your flight is called, and as you line up, you find out that you have to present once more your ID along with your boarding pass. No, not again!
But that is not the end of this culture of distrust. As you enter the plane, the attendant asks for your boarding pass, which she has to check and scribble some initial or something upon. You wonder: Whatever for?
Days later, leaving through Naia Terminal 1 for Taipei, I retrace the steps: the guard at the terminal door; the X-ray machine; the check-in counter; and before going through immigration, another guard asks for ID (passport) and boarding pass. Of course so does the immigration officer. And then there is another X-ray machine where the same metallic items, electronic gadgets and shoes have to pass through X-ray.
If you don’t look dignified enough, “mukhang mahirap,” “dugyot” “maitim,” yet another guard demands to see passport and boarding pass as you walk to the pre-departure area. But if you are in a branded suit or jacket, or sport an Hermes handbag, or look like a LizQuen or JaDine, the guards would turn solicitous and even obsequious. And of course, as you depart, airline personnel look at your passport and boarding pass.
Now compare these checkpoints to those obtaining in your usual foreign destination when you depart from their airport.
You enter the terminal without a security guard checking you and straight into the check-in counter or use the electronic check-in machine. After which you go through customs where your hand-held luggage and laptops go through X-ray (just once and no removing of shoes). Your next boarding pass and passport control would be the immigration officer, after which you go through to the pre-departure area. And just before you depart, you pass by an airline ground attendant who checks your boarding pass along with passport. That is all, right?
And yet there are no “tanim-bala” incidents in foreign terminals where there are less checkpoints.
One wonders if the numerous manned checkpoints are our way of employing the otherwise un-employable. Or it is just because by culture, we are a distrustful people.
But then again, even our distrust is selective.
Pag mukhang mayaman, less checkpoints. The rich and powerful even have “escorts” so they could breeze through the airport terminals (in my entire public service career where I have held lofty-enough positions, I have disdained the practice of having escorts or “salubongs,” finding the same both abusive and “nakakahiya.”)
Even with foreigners, we tend to discriminate. Pag colored, inspect and scrutinize. Pag puti, todo pasa. Especially pag mukhang mayaman, magara ang damit. (A Taiwanese company once complained to us that an engineer they hired from the mainland was not allowed entry by immigration officers because he came in shorts and sandals). Smacks of racism, and then again, why do you think our females (and some males as well) buy tons and tons of “whitening” lotions and take glutathione pills, with advertisements thereof shamelessly denigrating the “dark” complexion and being “white” such a desideratum sine qua non.
In many cosmopolitan cities, Taipei for instance, you can hardly find “sekyus” guarding establishments other than banks where a lot of cash gets stashed and withdrawn. In Metro Manila, you have “sekyus” in almost every establishment, whether private or government offices, restaurants, malls, even beauty parlors. And if you try to find out the ownership of the security agencies, you will most likely discover an ex-general, or even one still in active service.
Yet we pride ourselves in being a “kind and hospitable” people. Just because we keep smiling, and our children as well even if they are hungry and miserable, we tout our “happiness” and claim “cheerfulness” as a tourism come-on.
One of our memorable tourist slogans was “The Philippines, where Asia wears a smile.” But there is an awful disconnect when we place our smiles side by side with a culture of distrust that manifests in most every way we deal with fellow humans from foreign shores and even with fellow Filipinos.