Too much politics

Perhaps now opposition lawmakers will no longer be so hot about approving the absentee voting bill. With First Gentleman Mike Arroyo getting his first official job in his wife’s administration, as a peso-a-year adviser on overseas Filipino workers, President GMA is sure to gain a big lead in winning hearts and minds among OFWs, in case there will be absentee voting in 2004.

In line with his new job, the First Gentleman will fly to Rome next month, of course to meet with the Filipino community. You can bet there will be many more such trips to come. Will Juan de la Cruz foot the travel expenses of the peso-a-year adviser? What about the expenses of Mike A’s entourage? Surely the First Gentleman can’t travel alone.

Oh well, in this country, all is fair in love, war and politics. Those overseas forays will be even more effective in winning hearts and minds when Sen. Noli de Castro joins the First Gentleman. Why Noli? The buzz is President GMA wants "Kabayan" as her running mate. Malacañang has reportedly been spooked by internal surveys showing Noli with ratings too high for comfort. Persuading him to become the President’s running mate will not only take him out of the presidential race (there goes an ace of the Lopez clan), it will also create (Malacañang hopes) a formidable administration team.

Is the presidential campaign in full swing? Why, it started in January 2001.

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It’s ironic that President Arroyo is again being accused of premature campaigning when she has just said too much politics is setting back the building of a strong Republic. We all agree with her, but can we ever get politics out of our system?

Perhaps we should just ignore the politicians and work on improving the nation by improving ourselves and doing our best in our line of work. But this is easier said than done. In this country there is no sense of nationhood, no caring for the greater good. It’s every man for himself – whether in traffic, politics or public service. No one ever admits responsibility for disasters, and no one admits guilt even when presented with evidence. When an official is accused of stealing public funds, the common reaction is: But everyone else is doing it! Why pick on me? This is nothing but politicking.

When everyone is a crook, who can start national cleansing?

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Just driving in Metro Manila can make you think the worst of the Filipino. I’m not even referring here to the traffic, which has grown worse as usual with the approach of Christmas. In Las Piñas, the idiots who direct traffic are out in full force. You know when they’re on duty when smooth traffic flow suddenly gets snarled on Alabang-Zapote Road from one end to the other.

While stuck in traffic in Pasay City yesterday afternoon I idly examined the taxi ahead of me, a white Corolla with TVU 705 license plates. Stuck to its dashboard were two miniature glow-in-the-dark religious statues. I was trying to determine what the driver had suspended from the rear-view mirror when he got out of the car, then dumped a bunch of boiled banana peels on the pavement.

Then he drove off and changed lanes, and I saw it was a "NineONine" cab.

I was at the approach to the northbound lane of the Roxas Boulevard flyover on Gil Puyat Avenue. With NineONine gone the vehicle ahead of mine was now an FX taxi so grimy I could make out "Harry Pater" written in bold letters in the dust that had accumulated on the rear window.

Our vehicles crawled down the flyover. Then we had to dodge the carts of peanut vendors who have become a fixture on that stretch of Roxas Boulevard. You know you’ve left Pasay and entered the city of Manila when the vendors disappear.

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No "garbage czar" (why do we have this thing about Russian royalty?) can ever clean up a capital where people dump banana peels in the middle of a busy boulevard. As long as their taxicab is clean, who cares about the street? Floods? They’re caused by rain, not garbage. I guess I should count myself lucky that my windshield has not been hit in the past few months by spit or a half-eaten hotdog tossed out by a bus commuter.

And where else in the world can you buy peanuts boiled in drums and pushed in carts in the middle of a busy boulevard? Before Chairman Bayani Fernando slugs it out with sidewalk vendors, maybe he should deal first with hawkers in the middle of busy streets.

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As for disasters, I asked a knowledgeable source about the so-called black box of the Laoag Air Fokker plane that crashed into Manila Bay recently. The black box, it turned out, was not working. The source told me that in fact most small planes in this country do not have a working black box, which is supposed to record flight data that could provide clues to the cause of a plane crash.

A good black box, I was told, could be almost as expensive as a small plane itself, especially the used aircraft that are converted for commercial purposes after years of heavy use by the military. So small planes make do without the black boxes. Air transportation officials simply look the other way, and we all know the reason for that. Also, I don’t think we have enough air transport personnel with the competence to determine the airworthiness of all aircraft in this country.

Anyway, this time an owner of an ill-fated aircraft may yet get punished. Not for violating air safety regulations, however, but for being an illegal alien. That way no blame will fall on some transport official.

The Laoag Air owner’s franchise, incidentally, was approved by Congress reportedly with the endorsement of a politician from Ilocos. You fly on a wing and a prayer in this country. And nothing will change as long as we have too much politics.

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THIS ONE ISN’T SHUTTING DOWN: French Ambassador Renée Veyret and Press Attaché Bénédicte Meyssan visited our office yesterday afternoon and said they had no intention of shutting down their embassy here. The ambassador is even planning to climb Mt. Apo in Davao sometime in February. Not everyone is terrified of Osama or Jemaah Islamiyah.