A national embarrassment

A national embarrassment LAST week was a particularly painful time to be a Filipino, thanks to the shenanigans of our some of our leaders. Earthquakes, super typhoons, and other forces of nature we can at least attribute to forces beyond our control. But how do we justify the embarrassing actuations of senators and congressmen, government officials, certain media people, and many of our fellow Filipinos?

I have always been in awe of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago’s ability to captivate people’s attention. She is articulate, feisty, and does not hold her punches even if she reduces herself to a caricature in the process. She has also on many occasions showed that she is not beyond poking fun at herself. And many times, she did show that there is truly something between her ears other than her puffy cheeks and her scowling face. But I must point out that the privilege speech she delivered at the floor of the Senate a few days ago marked a new low in the history of the Senate of the Philippines. I expected Santiago to be fiery and intense. But I did not expect her to go that low.

I have no love lost for the Juan Ponce Enriles of this world. Everyone in this country who is of a certain age and who is a non- Marcos loyalist knows the important role the man played during the dictatorship. He did make a critical turnaround that paved the way for the Edsa revolution to happen, but he subsequently became an obstructionist during the Cory administration when he didn’t get the kind of power and influence he was used to wielding during the Marcos years. He has tried to sanitize himself many times over but there is only so much propaganda can do to revise the past particularly when there are hundreds of thousands of eyewitnesses that are still living that can bear witness to the truth.

But there are better ways to expose a pig other than to wrestle with it in the mud. The words of George Bernard Shaw comes to mind: “I don’t like wrestling with pigs, it gets dirty and besides, the pig likes it.” Santiago may have just been reacting to Enrile’s earlier attempt at mudslinging, but by doing so, she did exactly what Enrile wanted her to do which was to go down to the gutter. No one won in that wrestling contest. Not Enrile, not Santiago, not the Senate, and certainly not the Filipino people.

Hardly have we recovered from the mud-wrestling spectacle at the Senate when certain congressmen started this movement to exempt national boxer Emmanuel Pacquiao from paying taxes for life. That has got to be the most idiotic idea to emanate from Congress. Why would anyone want to exempt a billionaire sportsman cum businessman cum legislator from paying taxes?

I agree that Pacquiao is not getting the respect and the consideration he deserves as a person who has brought immense honor and jubilation to the country and millions of Filipinos. But this does not mean he should be exempted from paying his dues as a citizen of this country. Let’s not lose sight of the real issue, which is that the people in this administration just need an intensive workshop on emotional intelligence. Pacquiao is not the enemy of the people, so let’s not turn him into one. The man has his frailties – let’s help him become better, not embarrass him publicly and make him the subject of a scandal barely a few days after his triumphant return to victory.

There’s this persistent yarn that’s going around that says imported relief goods from first world countries are being held up while on their way to areas devastated by the super typhoon. This embarrassing rumor has been fuelled by certain media people. A couple of news reporters have even tried to follow the trail of relief goods from the time they get into the country until the time they are received and consumed by typhoon victims - all under the guise of vigilance although I strongly suspect the real motivation was the scent of a possible scandal. They did not find any concrete proof other than the fact that some relief goods from other countries are indeed repackaged so that more people benefit from them. In short, the imported relief goods are reapportioned – the quantities in each packaged reduced – so that instead of, say, one family getting 12 rolls of toilet paper, three families get four rolls each. No one is exchanging imported goods with local goods. Even that yarn about how ready-to-eat military ration food has found its way into the black market could not be verified. And yet, certain media people persist on making reports that simply whet the imagination about possibilities of corruption and anomalies hounding the distribution of relief goods.

Why oh why do we do this to ourselves?

Why do we perpetuate rumors that paint ourselves as notoriously and pathologically corrupt that we even steal goods intended for victims of the worst typhoon ever to hit the country? Why do we like shooting ourselves in the foot?

http://manilastandardtoday.com/2013/12/08/a-national-embarrassment-4/