Wanted: Real changes for New Year 2014!

It’s our first column for the New Year 2014 and I’m sure that you folks enjoyed your New Year’s Eve revelry, from all sorts of booze to small pyrotechnics. I’m sure a few bullets were fired indiscriminately by senseless revelers. Days prior to New Year, firecracker injuries were already alarmingly high. But since most news outlets are on New Year holiday, I’m sure that we’d get the exact figures of the maimed and injured from the Department of Health (DOH) in a day or two.

Every year we always come up with our traditional New Year wish list, but as I checked our previous New Year wish lists for 2012 and 2013, it seems that the two previous articles were nearly identical copies because of the reality that we just didn’t get our New Year wish list. But it shouldn’t mean that we might as well stop hoping, right?

After all the New Year always brings hope even to us jaded journalists who know that the situation under the Aquino regime has become seemingly hopeless in the sense that we can never hope for genuine political reforms. These are times when we can no longer trust the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch because of the Janet Napoles scam and the for that crying out loud squabble between former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, which has visibly damaged the reputation of the Philippine Senate, thanks to Senate President Franklin Drilon who failed to stop the quarreling Senators. It is really time to change our politics!

So rather than continue with our tradition of writing out to our readers our New Year wish list, I will only present one New Year wish today. If there is any wish deep within my heart it is the wish of all wishes… that we shall truly see a change in our present type of governance. Whenever I meet with friends their usual complaint is almost unanimously the same… that things really hasn’t changed since the 1986 EDSA Revolution. If at all, we’ve even changed for the worse! So it is time to change things for the better!

Still on the issue of change, one of things that I always look forward to on Sundays is to read the Philippine STAR’s comics. Last Sunday’s Calvin and Hobbes was quite unique and it fits perfectly why our nation needs this change for New Year 2014. So allow me to reprint the chat between Calvin and his imaginative Tiger doll, Hobbes. This story starts with Hobbes asking Calvin a question. Hobbes is “H” and Calvin is “C”.

“H: Are you making any resolutions for the New Year? C: Nope, I want everything to stay the same, as it was this year. H: Everything? C: Right…this year was lousy, but at least it’s familiar… I hate change! It’s too disruptive! When things are different, you have to think about the change and deal with it. I like things to stay the same, so I can take everything for granted. Besides, things keep changing for the worse! The longer I live the more complicated everything gets. I say let’s stop here before life gets harder! From now on, no more change!”

I used this comic book scene to depict the mindset of the majority of Filipinos today who are scared to force changes for our nation for the sake of reshaping our nation into a better country. This thought brings us back to the famous curse of the late Pres. Manuel L. Quezon, who said “I would rather have a country run like hell by Filipinos than a country run like heaven by the Americans, because however bad a Filipino government might be, we can always change it.” So there you are, even Pres. Quezon himself advocated change if we have a bad government and in my book a bad government is a government that stubbornly refuses to exact changes that our nation needs.

After 14 long years under a dictatorship, Filipinos did force a change way back in 1986 during the EDSA revolt where we forced a change from the one-man rule of the conjugal Marcos Dictatorship and back to a democratic system of governance. But 27 years later, take a look at the Philippines and you will see that nothing much has changed. This reminds me of what French journalist, critic, novelist and editor of Le Figaro in 1839, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr once quipped in his native French language, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”— the more it changes, the more they stay the same.” So it sort of discourages us from  seeking the changes we need.

But if we do not force some kind of change today, we can already predict what could be the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections, especially in a pork-less environment in Congress. With constitutional changes out of the question under the Aquino regime, we must now look for other ways and means to come up with a change that will launch the Philippines to finally be at par with the rest of our ASEAN neighbors. For instance, we can start on road discipline and come up with a strike 3 you’re out merit system for traffic violators. If we can discipline our drivers… we can change this country! Discipline is the right move to bring forth change for the New Year 2014. 

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