Why do we weep only after the disaster?

Today, every opinion writer will be dishing out the usual two cents’ worth about the crash of the Fokker plane (Flight 585) of Laoag International Air in Manila Bay. By this morning, the death toll surely will have risen with the bodies of some of the passengers "missing" having been recovered. We’ll leave that question to the investigators — and the morticians.

There is already a great deal of finger-pointing and stammering over the issue of what caused the tragedy. Questions must be answered: How old was that Fokker-27? Was it engine failure or some other reason that caused the aircraft to plummet into Manila Bay? No use speculating about anything else until everything is in.

Years ago, when I was energetic enough to be a member of the Philippine Safety Council, we used to have a motto: Accidents don’t happen – they are caused. Don’t ask me who coined it – the slogan was there when I arrived, and still there when I left. It sounded catchy, but, frankly, I thought it a bit too profound to be easily understood. What the original sloganeer intended to convey, I believe, was that accidents are "caused" by carelessness and neglect. If we apply this motto to yesterday’s disaster, it begins to make sense.

It seems, for instance, that Laoag Air has only a fleet of four aging aircraft, yet it apparently flies not only between Manila and Laoag (Ilocos Norte), but also to Batanes, Tuguegarao and Leyte. Indeed, pardon me for being dumb, but – although I come from Ilocos Sur – I had never heard of Laoag Air before (much less an airline pretentious enough to dub itself "Laoag International Air", without owning (even one single international route). Now, there’s nothing wrong with being small – but "small" should result in being more shipshape and efficient. The biggies tend to overlook the small details. Could this be said of Laoag Air? Or was it an airline operating on a shoestring – which is dangerous when you’re several thousand feet up in the air? Who gave Laoag Air the "franchise" to operate? How old, really, are the carrier’s four airplanes?

We’re a junkyard of a country, which is what worries me no end. We have 10 to 15-year second-hand junk buses from Japan and South Korea. We have other second-hand junk vehicles, including perilously unsuitable right-hand drive vehicles from countries where the traffic runs on the left side of the road.

And our Philippine Air Force and Armed Forces almost "bought" a squadron of junk F-5 jet warplanes from Taiwan – aircraft that the Taipei government wanted to dispose of because they had become dilapidated.

The foreign tourists who perished in yesterday’s mishap trusted in our government’s proper regulation of air carriers and its imposition of correct safety measures and precautions, as well as its having scrupulously "vetted" all aircraft we permit to take to the air. Was their "faith" woefully misplaced? Among the dead were Australians, Britishers, Vietnamese, and, of course, Filipinos. We long-suffering Pinoys at least realize, on the other hand, that in everything we undertake here we take our chances – and are too often doomed to disappointment, or worse, when we are so foolish as to trust our government.

I’m sorry for the foreign visitors, tourists, and ex-pats who died. The grief of their families and friends is our grief. (I’m not even worrying about the impact of this latest tragedy on Mr. Wow and our already deep-sixed tourism industry.) What I’m most sorry about, however, is that we Filipinos, thanks to our endemic apathy and our meek acceptance of such awful instances of lack of official concern as the franchisng of an obviously threadbare airline are on the way to the destruction of our self-confidence and self-esteem. If this slide goes on, we’ll inevitably fall into the depths of despair, just as surely as that ill-starred airplane careened helplessly into Manila Bay.

We already see the symptoms of this mounting malaise in the growing sense of anarchy, a breakdown in discipline and focus, as well as an increasing incidence of corruption and graft.

A nation – to survive and beyond that, to progress – must be held together by a feeling of nationhood and pride, and moved forward not merely by perspiration and sweat but by the inspiration of noble aspirations and ideals. Where has nobility gone? Where is that feeling of nationhood and shared purpose?

I regret to have to observe that our President, in whom such high hopes reposed when she set out to lead us almost two years ago, appears to have lost her way. She has to regain her compass – if she truly has the will to do so. She deceives herself if she feels that the path of leadership is to go from one photo opportunity to another. This is not good, because nobody else is deceived.

Alas, as the year 2004 nears, President GMA and her merry men (and women) are getting panicky. At the beginning, we asked her to do her best, not even thinking of "re-election" in 2004 – then, she’d leave behind, whatever beckoned in the future, the legacy of a great Presidency. Sad to say, she has thought of nothing else but re-election quite obviously from Day One.

I submit that she still had time enough – but barely – to redirect herself into making the final months of her current stewardship count.

But there are many who believe that it is already too late. She must know that the mounting outcry among the population is for a "strong President", and the deplorable assumption is spreading that she is not the strong President that the "strong republic" she promised in her SONA (State of the Nation Address) demands.

The police fear her not. The military are romping about playing fun and games, and gossiping about cuckoo coups, or buzzing like schoolboys about plots and counterplots. The underground economy is what moves while the above-ground economy is in tatters. The citizenry cower in fear, not just of rebels, gangsters, and bullies, but of their own crooked lawmen, government agents and rogue soldiers. Then there are the corrupt bureaucrats, whose chicanery and debauchery are unbridled, and who don’t seem to fear even the President herself.

Last year, GMA went to London – not to visit the Queen, but to meet with, among others, Britain’s former Prime Minister, the indomitable Margaret Thatcher. Maggie Thatcher’s sobriquet was well-earned; she was called the "Iron Lady". First elected Prime Minister (as leader of the Conservatives) in 1979, Thatcher "ruled" for eleven and a half years, winning three election victories, and bringing Britain through the Falklands War ( which incidentally was commemorated only the other day), a terrible Miners’ Strike, a Brighton bomb attack intended to wipe out the leadership of her Tony Party, the Gulf War and the operation against Iraq in 1991, and other crises.

Since that meeting, GMA has attempted to put on so many costumes, don so many guises and disguises, and switch from one "image" to another, that she’s overlooked what made Baroness Thatcher so formidable and successful. (I won’t add, "even in a world of antagonistic and doubting men."

What were these traits? For starters, the iron in her resolve. The steely nature of her character. Her refusal to compromise, or cavil for her character. Her refusal to compromises, or cavil for the sake of political expedient.

To strive to do the same is GMA’s only hope of salvation. At this stage, I hate to have to say it, she’s got only wishbone where her backbone should be.

Dimpling, smiling, and trying to look pretty may be nice: but nice, in our give-no-quarter kind of politics and our present day mess, doesn’t cut it. Nor will pouting, throwing tantrums or frowning, do ti. Only resolute and remorseless action. Only putting the fear of God — and Gloria — in her Cabinet, and in her own family. Only the steel claw in the velvet glove. Only the decision to inflict punishment where it’s due. Only determination and grit.

Once, La Presidenta said, so forthrightly, that she could not promise to grow taller, but she could promise to do better. Has she lived up to the latter? That’s a rhetorical question to which everyone already knows the answer.