How are we doing?

A couple of months ago, a concerned friend asked if it was safe for me to continue working here at the paper, considering that journalists have become prime targets for liquidation. Though I appreciated his concern, I had to laugh; of course it’s safe, I told him, no one’s going to waste their bullets on me

Some years ago I was also asked if it was safe for me to continue living here, at the time when kidnap for ransom was rampant, and the targets were more often than not Tsinoys. Though I had to admit that the potential threat was there, I doubted that anyone would bother to kidnap me, since The STAR has a strict no ransom policy

I’m getting emails and phone calls again from concerned relatives and friends abroad, after the recent spate of killings of journalists, politicians, ex-politicians, government employees and even a young couple whose crime was to withdraw P350,000 from the bank. Suspects have been arrested in several of the cases, but that doesn’t seem to be much of a deterrent for criminals. People seem to have become so used to reading about some killing or other in the morning papers that it’s hardly given a second look, but the brazenness and audacity of the mid-day shooting of Ephraim and Wendy Young on a busy city street jolted everyone. Are we now living in such troubled, terrible times, when the bullet has the final word, when a knife settles a dispute, and a message is sent by a bomb or a burst of gunfire?

Desperate times breed desperate people who resort to desperate solutions. With everything but our incomes and our spirits soaring, things don’t look like they’re going to change for the better anytime soon. Belt tightening is going to be the order of the day again–if people still have belts, or did they sell those off a long time ago to buy food?

Government indeed is caught between a rock and a very hard place on the matter of taxes, gas and utility prices, and other fiscal issues, but these painful issues are boiling over now after having been set aside in favor of popular, populist policies for so many campaign seasons. Photo ops and press releases will not give people jobs or put food on their tables. Announcing anti-corruption campaigns and ordering police to go after criminals will not stop anomalous deals and shooting sprees.

When my relatives phone to ask if we‘re okay over here, I wonder what I’m going to answer