Real change

Real change has come. From Batac to the heroes’ cemetery in Taguig is a giant leap for the remains (the bones, not the wax replica on public display) of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Happy days are here again for the groups chanting Marcos, Marcos pa rin!

From the abolition of the death penalty, we have leapfrogged to execution on mere suspicion. Real, permanent change has come to the nearly 4,000 people killed so far in the drug war and their bereaved families. Perhaps drug pushing is down, but we now have the highest homicide rate in the Asia-Pacific. Life has become cheap and killing has become a way of life. From a snail-paced justice system, we have swung to instant cardboard justice.

As of yesterday, with all the flip-flopping, the US was still out and China and Russia in for President Duterte, who might have a change of heart once his kindred spirit Donald Trump takes over the White House in January. No change: China’s still in charge at Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal; it still occupies Panganiban (Mischief) Reef and claims ownership of nearly all of the South China Sea.

Change has come to public discourse, from civility to profanity and nastiness.

Nur Misuari, the communists and armed rebellion are forgiven and rewarded. Organized religion and the Catholic bishops are on the government’s s**t list.

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What has not changed are all those things that people had hoped an action man like Rodrigo Duterte would deal with quickly and decisively: traffic gridlocks (in the streets, at the NAIA, at the Port of Manila), inadequate mass transportation, red tape and graft in the bureaucracy.

I know several people who delayed renewing their driver’s license, even if they had to pay a fine, because they wanted to get the five-year license promised by the new administration. Instead they got the same paper license valid for three years. What happened to the five-year license? No one knows. When will the license cards be issued? Who knows?

In Metro Manila, the daily commute is a constant reminder of hell in a very small place. It’s not unusual for people to spend from four to six hours daily commuting. Even on the light railway services and commuter trains, which are favored for the lack of street traffic and predictable schedules, the commute becomes an awful slog because of the long lines for tickets and the insufficiency of trains.

Last Friday I was supposed to meet someone to swap some goods at a mall near the final station where the MRT and LRT systems meet, at the junction of EDSA and Taft Avenue in Pasay City.

The guy texted me at 12:30 p.m. that he was on his way and taking the MRT from the farthest point, the North Avenue station. We both figured he would be at the Taft Avenue station long before 2 p.m., our meeting time.

At 2 p.m. I was there. At 10 past 2, with no place to park and worried about traffic aides eyeing my car, I asked where he was. He texted that he was at the Boni station in Mandaluyong – five stops away. I figured it would take him at least another 20 minutes to reach Pasay so I texted that I had to leave.

Some time later he texted that it took him a looong time to board the MRT because the line for tickets was exceptionally long.

Then our texting went awry. I’m not sure whose signal got messed up. With the delayed relaying of messages, he ended up waiting in Pasay for nearly four hours when I though he had already left.

Before 6 p.m., when I realized he was still there, I called to tell him I could send a messenger to him for our swap. I could barely hear him above the din in the background. By that time he was already in line for his MRT return ticket, and he said it was nearly impossible for him to leave the line and go out of the station because there was barely room to move. He was screaming into the phone because he said he could barely hear me.

At least he didn’t have the added bad luck of having the MRT train break down during his commute.

We finally swapped our stuff on Saturday. I sent someone to meet him at the Trinoma.

Such woes have become a daily bane for millions of Filipinos. These are the things that people had hoped would get quick attention from action man Du30.

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Under Duterte, overseas Filipino workers at least now have one-stop shops, although the facilities are still limited. The tanim-bala has stopped. And despite concerns about human rights, I know people who like the permanent cleansing that Du30’s minions are doing among crooked barangay officials.

But at this point it looks like a major beneficiary of the promised “real change” is the clan of Ferdinand Marcos. And if fate continues to smile on the clan, the dictator will have his ultimate vindication and his only son and namesake will become president of the republic.

They won’t even have to wait until the next general elections in 2022. After that Supreme Court voting on the Marcos burial, there’s a good chance that Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. will win his electoral protest against Vice President Leni Robredo, whose victory margin is slim.

Du30 and his officials have noted (correctly) that he had expressed support for Marcos’ burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani even during the campaign. So Du30 is just fulfilling one of his campaign promises, which also included the vow to kill, kill, kill. No one can say he didn’t warn us.

If Bongbong Marcos becomes vice president, there’s also a good chance that Du30 will prove true to his word, tell his critics to go shove it, and step down, handing over power on a silver platter to the dictator’s son.

The Marcoses have risen, and the Marcoses will come again. Now that will be real change.