What’s happening in our nation

“A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” — JOHN F. KENNEDY

By Alex P. Vidal

This is the state of our nation:

1. Most of those who are in power — President, vice president, senators, congressmen, governors, mayors (and even some barangay captains) are billionaires and millionaires who don’t live a frugal life; they are not role models for the hoi polloi;

2. Graft and corruption has depleted our resources and we have become the object of derision and unsavory spiels by observers from other countries. No corrupt public official has been jailed or shot in public;

3. Poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, ignorance have spawned more social maladies such as squatter, child and adult prostitution, criminality, drug addiction, suicide, insanity, cult fanaticism, religious dogmatism, poor sanitation and garbage disposal, among other serious health and environmental problems;

4. “Pork barrel” will not be eliminated. Politicians will swim and sink with this budgetary cellulite, the biggest source of their seed money to sustain their extra-curricular activities outside the marital bed and after office hours;

5. Women and children are still being exploited in labor, whorehouses, film, and in other salacious and prurient activities in the name of livelihood and economic buildup;

6. Criminal elements — those involved in drug trafficking, kidnapping-for-ransom, human trafficking for prostitution and labor, holdup and hulidup, gambling, akyat bahay, gangsterism, street mugging and mulcting, begging syndicates — are making a pile and are not neutralized. Many of them enjoy protection from corrupt policemen.

7. There is a culture of impunity. Killing of activists, labor leaders, and crusading journalists has continued unabated owing to the failure of authorities to solve one murder after another. No efforts from the higher authority to run after and prosecute the perpetrators who are mostly hired killers.

8. RH law has been muzzled and frozen by no less than the Supreme Court.

9. We are still being bullied by China and other neighboring countries that are numerically and militarily superior; and our unguarded islets and territorial waters are being invaded one after the other.

10. Our overseas Filipino workers (OFW) continued to be enslaved by exploitative and heartless employers in cahoots with unscrupulous agencies that hired them. Many of them live under sub-human conditions, receive paltry sum for their salary, and are treated shabbily if not raped and maltreated by sadistic bosses and malicious embassy consuls.