Sooner than later, the P-Noy administration may end up with real headaches far more serious than tweetering twits or travel advisories that simply state the obvious.
There are more “important problems” that face Filipinos on a daily basis, for them to be concerned about tweetering twits or travel advisories since most Filipinos can’t afford to Tweet or can’t travel because of the chaos caused by private companies.
Unfortunately there is an apparent agenda to prop up the new administration as a regional player and to try to sell the Philippines as the next investment destination rather than address day-to-day concerns of ordinary Filipinos.
One notion is that the administration is temporarily focusing on the international stage because they incessantly get their butts kicked by the ex-administration, by the Supreme Court, or by their own blunders and lack of discretion.
Others say they’re buying time until they can form and solidify a cabinet that would actually survive being trashed and ripped by the Congressional Commission on Appointments, or their own foot in mouth disease.
For politically sophisticated and complex minded people, this may be the appropriate thing to do, but for the simpler folks, this strategy is a recipe reminiscent of the ostrich burying it’s head, or river dwellers waiting for the water to be knee high before evacuating. Sooner or later, disaster will strike with your name on the list.
Just to put things in context, when we left for Japan last week, the headline news was about how the present administration strongly disagreed with the Travel advisories of the US, UK and Australia concerning serious risks of terrorist attacks in the Philippines.
While we were in Nagoya, Japan we were not spared from the daily “text” messages about how bad the traffic was, that the Magallanes bridge was practically closed because of the serious leak in the fuel pipe line from Batangas port, how traffic on the Skyway area continued to punish commuters or how P-Noy chose to get involved in the silliness of a twittering twit.
Obviously, there is a difference in what those who govern think is important versus what the governed know is important.
President Noynoy and his followers are still struggling to put up a government, while Filipinos continue to struggle daily because of the lack of governance and solution.
The P-Noy administration is so affected by the foreign travel advisories concerning “very high risk of terrorist attacks” in malls and popular places. Our “government in the making” feels it’s very unfair and damaging.
On the other hand, ordinary Filipinos have no bones about it, since it’s only been a few months that eight Hong Kong tourists were slaughtered by a renegade police officer inside a tourist bus in the Philippines. The fact that a total travel ban was not imposed was already an act of diplomatic kindness.
While the government is concerned with our International image, they seem to overlook local sentiment about the Luneta Hostage incident, the successive rapes and murders including the brutal rape and assault on the volunteer nurse named “Nightingale”, and the grenade attack on students and “Bar” examinees?
Add to that the statistics and reports about the 30 or so politically related murders and shootings during the last two elections.
Have we as a nation and a people become so used to terror in our streets and in our daily lives that we no longer have the ability to recognize and appreciate other peoples concern about terrorism?
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Last week, when we got on the tour bus in Nagoya, Japan, the tour guide immediately emphasized that: “Japan is very safe, so safe that you can even drink the water”.
In the Philippines, simple Filipinos have learned not to wear jewelry, hide mobile phones and put cash inside their underwear just in case, the bus they’re riding is held up by robbers. Depending on where you live and how you live, the tap water will, either hurt you because it is over-chlorinated or contaminated due to illegal connections.
Rather whine about how the wine sucks, or idiotize us with cinematic plots on the love life of the President, this new administration should just grow up, and if P-Noy is truly a music aficionado, he ought to pull out the Don Henley or EAGLES track entitled “Get over it”. The lyrics will be self- explanatory.
As for the terror plots, a few years ago, a collective fart reportedly caused the major explosion at the Glorietta that killed several Filipinos. In the same general area, not far from the reported site of a presidential date night, there is a popular watering hole of expats, tourists, hookers and diners.
It is a visual smorgasbord of flesh and passion but it is a place we distance ourselves from because it is miniature version of a scene from Bali, Indonesia where people were brutally incinerated by terrorists. In other words, that open area at Glorietta has always been a potential target. So one + one = truth.
But rather than whine, kindly deal with it.
Deal with the apparent security risk because that is your job, not America’s or Australia.
Deal with our concern about the traffic.
Deal with the companies who are not even penitent about the financial public cost and discomfort they are causing, in order to put up a business where they will make money on us, such as the Skyway Corporation.
Deal with the major delays and risk being caused by the fuel pipeline leak before real terrorists realize a genuine opportunity!
Deal with the local government officials, the Bureau of Fire Protection, and commercial establishments that have started to endanger people in over crowded and uncontrolled shopping areas in Divisoria, the major malls etc.
Deal with the weekly carnapping, the weekly bus robberies, the killing of foreign tourists outside Metro Manila, and most of all the terror of incompetence regularly displayed by people in the new administration who don’t even have the courtesy of offering to resign for their serious blunders.
Yes, there is a serious terrorist risk in the Philippines and we Filipinos have to deal with it from day-to-day. But now, Mr. President, it’s your turn.
So, deal with it.