We are all aware of our potential as Filipinos. Every day, we try to be excellent in what we do and spend sleepless nights to avoid being labeled as mediocre or incompetent. We have family members or friends who have made it big in other countries and become top corporate executives or sought-after talents in their own respective fields.
Thus, it pained us immensely when we watched on our TV screens how the world has come to judge and generalize Filipinos by the actions of our policemen. It is hard to reconcile the high esteem we have for our countrymen with the bungle-ups and boo-boos of the SWAT team. Our bruised egos then begin to rationalize the situation, most usually, by distancing ourselves from the government and the police force. We claim that we are different from our national institutions and worse, we join in condemning and maligning the administration for its failure. Such behavior entrenches in our national psyche the great divide between Filipinos. We concretize this every time we distinguish ourselves from our countrymen who have brought us shame or disappointment. From drivers involved in gruesome accidents to domestic helpers who crowd the shopping malls in foreign lands, we pretend that the world could recognize the distinction between the First World and the Third World Filipino.
Jack London, in his essay, “What Life Means to Me,” offers an interesting insight that might help us make sense of the tragedy our country is in. London came from an impoverished working-class background and was one in a million who had the innate ambition to climb the social ladder. He writes, “Up above me, I knew, were unselfishness of spirit and noble thinking. All men and women thought beautiful thoughts, spoke a beautiful tongue, and performed glorious deeds. Above me was all that was fine and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life, all that made life worth living and that remunerated one for his travail and misery.”
For the past two weeks, Filipinos have been too harsh in condemning our government and police. Sitting in their ivory towers, they enumerate in hindsight, all the mistakes of the government’s police force. Perhaps, a few blocks from where they type and judge comfortably in air-conditioned rooms sits the community’s mamang pulis, his back arched as he logs the usual piles of paper work he has to mindlessly document every day. He is faced with the indomitable task of assuring peace and order in a society that treats its laws as suggestions. He sighs as he risks life and limb to catch criminal elements with a measly budget of P740 a month for operating expenses. It is, like London’s world, “a life of sordidness and wretchedness, both of the flesh and the spirit, starved and tormented alike.”
None of this is to serve as an excuse for the failure of the PNP. However, it could be an opportunity to pause, withhold judgment, and consider the situation of one of the most vital but ailing institutions of our nation. In most countries, being a policeman is a position of honor and pride brought about by their duty and service to the people. In my experience as a teacher, however, I have yet to personally meet students who would want to join the police force when they grow up. The image ingrained in their minds of policemen is that of abusive and power-hungry kotong kings. Devoid of dignity and status, what then could the job offer to entice competent and skilled individuals?
The Philippine National Police is one of our many institutions that has suffered due to our country’s poverty. Through the years, it has slowly deteriorated even as some sectors of society have modernized and adhered to global standards.
Times like these should make us realize that the private sector cannot simply leave our government institutions behind. “We are as fast as our slowest member,” goes an oft-repeated human resource quote. As long as we keep pretending that we could survive on our own without our government, events like these would continue to negate all the notable distinctions that various Filipinos have been achieving worldwide.
The saddest fact about what happened two weeks ago was that we do not have control over the hostage situation. What we could change, however, are the inhumane environments that breed a Rolando Mendoza. Rather than point out the obvious, it’s time we took responsibility for the Philippines and for our own government by supporting its battle against the dehumanizing effects of poverty. As with all the national crises that we have faced, we cannot expect other Filipinos to be decent citizens if they continue living in indignity and self-helplessness.