Typhoon Karding just passed. It was a super typhoon. Some areas were under Typhoon Signal No 4. The weather bureau was predicting some spots might end up under Signal No. 5.
So many of us never saw how ferocious a typhoon under Signal No. 4 could be. Signal No. 5 could be a massacre.
Billions of pesos worth of agricultural crops were damaged. Meaning, thousands and thousands, if not millions of poor farmers and their families were going hungry. And would be so in the coming weeks, if not months. Their kids of school age would be unable to go to school.
And then our President flew to Singapore with some of his close relatives to watch the F1 Grand Prix, the pinnacle of the car racing world. No doubt they must have spent hundreds of thousands of pesos.
Granting that the President is human and needs also to be entertained to keep his sanity, to have such under the circumstances was at the very least, insensitive to the suffering of his poor constituents.
Even if he and his families’ expenses can be said not to be immodest, it was still insensitive to the typhoon victims who just went through hell. Most of them might not even have known where to get the next meal. For many, even up to now.
While the Singapore Grand Prix must really be a sight to behold, being the only one in the world held at night, he could have forgone the chance to watch it had he really cared about the feelings of his suffering people.
There would be the chance to watch it next year when, hopefully, the conditions of the typhoon victims would be a lot better.
What’s wrong with being insensitive to the suffering of the people every once in a while?
It is proof that, chances are, the President did not really care about the plight of the suffering Filipinos.**