I recall what then-Senator Orly Mercado used to say about us all: The problem with us Filipinos is we cannot see beyond the tip of our noses. “Sana man lang matangos ang mga ilong natin. Ang sama mo, pango pa tayo.”
Orly was referring to our inability to think long-term, much less plan for the long-term. Everything is about today; everything is about the present.
Neither do we look back, and learn from lessons of the past. And it progressively grows worse. Our parents and grandparents knew how to cherish our traditions, our culture, our heritage more than we do. Sadly, our children and grandchildren hardly have a sense of any history. There is hardly a distinguishing facet of native culture in them. It’s all Western, not even Asian.
To prove his point, Orly cited the sad state of our infrastructure, built for the needs of yesterday and probably a few more years of the present, or good for the next elections. And then we do repairs, this time good for a few months, the asphalt overlay to be washed out by the rains.
Politicians they say plan in terms of the next elections; statesmen plan for the next generations.
Now when was the last time we really had statesmen in this country?
And do we not have a surfeit of politicians?
(Which is why, with all due respect to the sages of our Consultative Council for Constitutional Change, I am aghast at the proposal to divide the nation into a multiplicity of states, and along with the same, a multiplicity of elected officials. But more of that next week.)
Now the short-sightedness, the lack of planning, the indifference, the neglect, all peppered and not merely laced with corruption—our collective sins as a polity—are, like sin, exacting its wages upon our lives.
Take Boracay, today’s hottest example of our collective sins of neglect, indifference, corruption and an abysmal lack of planning for the future, and see how, as in Romans 6:23, the “wages of sin” are upon us.
Now our government agency officials are telling the islanders and all who depend on it’s beauty for livelihood and profits that we must bite the bullet of a six-month closure, perhaps longer.
We hope that with a determined leader who brooks no nonsense, after the period of “amends” over the neglect of Boracay ends, when the storm drains are built, the road widened, every establishment connected to the sewer line, building code violations demolished and the beachfront easements strictly enforced, we can truly look forward to a clean and beautiful Bora forever.
Last week, five people died in a once-posh hotel in Ermita which housed a casino. And the fire “protection” officials, after an entire day and night of battling the fire, learned from survivors that the fire alarm system, if there was any, did not work. Most likely, neither did the central sprinkler system. Neglect and indifference.
President Duterte was fuming mad upon learning about the death of so many in Sablayan, Mindoro Occidental, after the decrepit bus they were riding fell into a ravine. He directed the franchise of “Dimples” (what a name!) bus line revoked and the owner charged. But after a while, when the anger abates, will our transport regulators and safety inspectors “relax”?
Each time a major road mishap (and it happens every now and then, all the time, in Quezon, in Bicol, at the Dalton Pass, the Montanosa, everywhere) occurs, we gnash our teeth in anger. We cry for justice and just compensation. But a month or two later we forget, and come to think of it, have safety standards ever been strictly enforced in this benighted land?
Do we ever learn our lessons? Do we ever change our ways?
Take our staple food—rice.
We’ve been importing rice since the turn of the previous century. Yet we keep defining rice self-sufficiency as the summum bonum, in fact, the solo desideratum of our agricultural efforts, administration after every administration.
We’ve poured billions upon billions of pesos to achieve this “Filipino dream” yet have never really quite figured out why we still import rice. Neither can we answer the “riddle” about why the Thais and Viets studied agriculture at UP Los Baños but our rice farmers cannot compete in price with theirs.
Truth is, our career officials know why, as well as why not.
But they are more often than not led by those who refuse to know why or why not, and though they know their “leaders” are wrong, they have not taken up the courage to tell them so, for fear of losing their jobs, civil service protection notwithstanding.
People who never learn from history, no matter how recent. So we are condemned to repeating the “wrong” history.
Think of most every issue that impacts upon our day-to-day lives. And realize that it’s because our collective sins of neglect, indifference, lack of vision, indecisiveness, moral cowardice, and corruption, are now “collecting” their wages.
