By Jan Vicente B. Pekas
devastating.“
When our officials see even a small possibility of trouble, they scurry off abroad for whatever reason and escape from any possibility of repercussions for their actions. They rack their brains fine tuned by the top universities of the nation and blabber their way into justifying their trips to holiday destinations around the world.
A more hilarious tactic that we have witnessed again is the sudden strike of illness that forces them to wear neck braces or walk around with a cane to emphasize their supposed injuries, better yet they go all in with the bit and put themselves in a hospital bed.
As I made my way to Los Baños to get some papers, the news of class suspension circulated fast among the jeepney drivers as we waited for more passengers to fill the many empty seats. Some time passed and the driver was forced to go on, left with the desperate actions of looking carefully onto the streets for any potential passengers. Given the weather in recent weeks, this suspension only cut the earnings of the already desperate drivers.
Some time when I made my way back to town, the situation was the same. It reached the point where I was the only passenger on board and was forced to transfer to another jeepney, since the current one had to go back and in his words try his luck on getting more passengers.
They could not rely on luck, instead, the driver was risking a lot. Given the prices of fuel, another empty trip would be devastating.
These ordinary Filipinos do not have a safety net. They do not get to just leave the country when the going gets tough and when trouble has all but multiplied. Even when put under a lose-lose situation, they are forced to choose one regardless. There is no escape tool for them.
For many Filipinos, we cannot just afford to run away. Unless the people willingly choose to die slowly from suffering every single day, there is only the choice of changing this unjust society and its consistent practice of exploiting ordinary Filipinos and catering to foreign interests while giving away local land and resources. Continuing the legacy of our forebearers as a colonial nation of western powers.
Discussion needs to shift from finding ways to survive in a situation where we are guaranteed to lose to more radical topics of completely revamping the system and what better things we could replace it with. To know that every person is deserving of better than the current treatment from our government is no treasonous action, it is only the most logical and morally righteous choice as a living being with the capability to think and reason and it should not be a topic to be feared. **
