Headlined in a few days ago by many media platforms was the holding of a fashion show in Malacanang courtesy of the first lady. Immediately came angry reactions from the public. By and large, these were based on the perceived insensitivity to the sufferings of the people who have to contend with skyrocketing prices especially those of tice which reportedly reached above sixty pesos per kilo.
Indeed, why hold such an affair when there are more better things to do in these times of hardships. A fashion show? In better times it might have been Okay but during these times, it is really insensitivity.
The response of Malacanang that no government money was spent for that is not believable. How about the water for the CRs and the lighting for the premises, the pay of people who had to go overtime just to allow members of the elite to display or satisfy their sartorial flair?
And that is missing the whole point. The lack of concern to the poorer segments of society.
It is not so different from what French Queen Marie Antoinette said, “Let them (the hungry poor) eat cake.”
How about leche flan or 7-cheese pizza or other similar expensive bread?
Then there was the Love the Philippines logo of the country which cost several millions of pesos illustrated by photos that turned out to be stolen or plagiarized. Not to be outdone PAGCOR came up with a new logo that also cost several millions of pesos.
Such careless but very expensive “kapalpakan” is very revealing of this administration’s gross insensitivity to the plight of the people.
We are talking here of just droplets from a gigantic bucket. An example of a huge caper of government is the sovereign fund. Judging from past careless ways of managing the people’s resources, that will surely end up also in the pockets of politicians and high-ranking bureaucrats and their cronies.
What will result from that is it will make corruption of really big government money easier to undertake. The funds will be consolidated into one big fund so just one devilish master stroke would be needed.
We have seen it before and we will see it again.
When things will come to a head, it would not be surprising if some of the most powerful families in this country would be driven again abroad just like what happened during the EDSA Revolution.**