OMG, those activists and squatters talaga!

(Author’s note: This piece is satirical and sarcastic, but many of the lines that appear here are actual lines from Facebook and Twitter posts and comments on news pages. Eat your heart out.)

MANILA, Philippines - Like, my god. Did you see? They were so gulo nung SONA. 15,000 daw sila but I think they were all paid. I bet JoMa Sison’s funding them all the way from the Netherlands. These communists talaga. You know? They like it when informal settlers get demolished because they recruit squatters to join their rallies.

They’re lazy naman kasi, eh! Those rallyists. Lazy! They don’t think of the common good. They’re always rallying, always asking for more, but they’re the cause of our problems naman! Di ba they’re the ones responsible for all the baha? They live beside the rivers, clogging the drainages with God-knows-what and they don’t even want to relocate? Ugh, they’re really being so selfish. As in. Sobra.

Why can’t we just kill all the poor people… like what they did in Singapore? I read that somewhere. Like, they did a national cleansing and killed all the poor people. Look at them now: rich and beautiful.

I mean, ang lucky na nga ng mga squatters, eh. If I were in their shoes, I’d pick up all my appliances — entertainment systems, TV, whatever, alam mo naman how much they love their TV sets — and make my way to the first relocation area the government gives me. Never mind that I lose my livelihood. Free housing ‘yun eh. Free ah! As in, taxpayers’ money! Taxpayer! That’s me! That’s my money, and then it goes to them. (It’s not a small amount of money, either. Ten percent of what I earn is more than what those squats earn in one year. Kahit ilang beses pa silang kumayod araw-araw, kahit ilang dyaryo’t bote pa man maipon nila, my god, they can’t ever earn half of what I pay in my income tax in one month.)

Karen Davila’s awesome question

The thing is these poor people just don’t make sense. Did you see on live TV last week, Karen Davilla asked an informal settler over the phone — squatter but may cellphone! — anyway, Karen said, “Sir, if your job is all the way in Makati and you live in North Triangle, bakit hindi na lang kayo nagtayo ng bahay sa Makati?” And the person on the other end couldn’t answer. ‘Di ba! Thank you, Karen, for your logical and insightful question.

In order to survive in this doggy dog world, the poor should just shut up and work their asses off. That’s what my Papa did, and never mind that he had to do some under-the- table deals or pay a little less wage to our workers. That’s life.

This is exactly what we told Carding, our driver before who lived in some squatters’ area. If poor people want high salaries, then they should just build their own companies. Or use their money for education… something like that. They kasi always spend their salaries on gambling or drinking or — yuck — making more of their kind. That Carding had too many children that he even started complaining about the salary we gave him. So bastos! Thank God for the RH Law.

So can they please stop rallying? I mean, they heard P-Noy! His temper’s boiling na! Why can’t we all just get along and stop rallying ‘cause there’s progress naman already? The poor should just do away with their mga kaartehan — lack of funding for education, human rights violations, “privatization” of public hospitals, whatever — kasi, alam mo ‘yun? It’s hard kaya to be President. He’s not naman a superhero. And besides, ang nice pa ng speech niya! I didn’t watch pero I heard it was good.

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What have we become when we desire poverty to reign in other people’s lives just because they can’t pay taxes and we do? Tweet the author @sarhentosilly.