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Philippines
Friday, March 29, 2024

Transient issues

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A former official of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency is arrested in a raid of a laboratory for illegal drugs. He claims he is innocent and that he is working as an undercover.

A former minister of the religious sect Iglesia ni Cristo is arrested by plainclothes policemen by virtue of a warrant of arrest issued by a court down south. He derides the arrest, saying the sect is behind it in retaliation for his revelations about corruption and power play. 

A senator seeks the reopening of the Mamasapano case, claiming he has new information that would establish who was responsible for the deaths of 44 police commandos and who told lies in succeeding days. Others say the senator is out for revenge, for being jailed as a result of his supposed involvement in the pork barrel scam. 

Two other senators, other former government workers and the alleged mastermind of the said scam are detained. Many cry selective justice because other officials, including those in the President’s own circle, have committed the same crime. 

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In all these and many other issues, Filipinos become witness to numerous allegations and counter-allegations by and about their government officials. These topics hog the headlines, fuel conversations and debates, and create confusion. They also divide the nation between, essentially, those who believe and those who don’t. 

Eventually the issues go away, because other newer controversies emerge and the people are supposed to have short memories—easy on forgetting, easy on exacting accountability. That is, until the issues come back, presenting greater consequences and longer-term implications. 

Filipinos are no strangers to unresolved issues.  We also never expect to know the exact truth on any one issue. On the contrary, we have come to accept that a certain topic has several different versions of truths depending on who is talking, and that the people involved exploit the public’s short attention span to bide time without paying for what they have done, or what they haven’t.

Now that elections are near, there will be more transient issues bound to compete for our attention. Some will be floated by political opponents. Some will be created as distractions by the candidates themselves. Yet some will be manufactured to ensure that they will elude justice when they are no longer in power. Some of these will be noise, but many are legitimate issues that must be discussed and dissected, never forgotten. 

The Filipino people must reject this supreme insult. We should assert that we are no longer a nation of entertainment-seekers who are soothed by motherhood statements and catchy slogans. If there is an issue, we must delve on it and be critical of the facts presented. We must recognize the topics that demand our attention and dismiss those that are meant to confuse us. 

We should stop talking about superfluous details and get to the closest approximation of the truth. In the end, we should say no to all attempts to keep us in the dark and discourage us from asking the difficult questions. 

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