On Black Campaigns

Tomorrow, the 29th of March between 8 to 9 PM in your time zone, you will be in black as the Earth Hour will be observed as part of the non-negotiable anti-global warming campaign. I have experienced 2–month long dark nights two decades ago when the super typhoon Ruping toppled electrical posts in our area while whipping central Philippines. Having an hour without electricity is not much of a bother to me. What dulls me more is the reason behind the campaign, weather it really is for the decaying environment or simply to redirect the public mind from a political activity hostile to the supporting governments just like the first Earth Day set simultaneous with Lenin’s 100th Anniversary. It confuses me as much as I am already confused with the businessmen made-believe “rice shortage” to increase the pricing of this Philippine staple. But anyway if you believe that there is really no significant event to be blocked by this global black out, go participate. Here is the campaign:

Partaking Public Perspiration

I am still aligning my sleep-wake cycle to my Rehabilitative Medicine rotation this March. The 24+8+8 hour 3-day routine was replaced by weekday office hour duties, stripping my receptions to Earth alive and resuscitating my long arrested civil opinion. I am not implicating here that my hospital job is a contraindication to having a personal life as it is my choice to deal with them separately.

I perceive the conventional Filipino to be extra disapproving. This trend which rooted from sporadic post-war stress disorder, grew into epidemic depression-after-oppression and fruited to this pandemic attention deficit where every mind feigning reliability crave for more daylight exposure around EDSA, more seconds in the broadcast and more square centimeter in the newsprints. They gooseneck placards, burn effigies, fire words of sense and none, to the government which they have forgotten they are also part of. They have forgotten that the Republic of the Philippines is a nation supposedly by the Filipino people and that they have to take part perspiring some of its oils which is not all about swarming like bees from a harassed hive and jamming traffic down main streets. Democratic minds in evolution - if this post will be understood wrongly, this must be the explanation.

I will skip those who chipped in rallies to support personal finances and lay down this paragraph for those who went along for national cause. The truth is we loved to be spoon-fed by the government, which we consider our parent, and do public tantrums if our desires are not fulfilled. Because we did not receive outright reassurance, we felt being betrayed, thus added more pascals to the pressure the government has been parrying or padding itself. We edgely contributed to the paralysis of civic mobility. Aren't we guilty? No, of course! We are blissful of our rebellion. “We have been there, we have done that, and it's fun!” we sing to ourselves and publicly announce that we “concerned” citizens have done our part in “correcting” the erroneous government, as if we previously corrected the errors among us.

Here are versions of problems where somehow we People of the Philippines share faults with the officials of the government:

Case 1: Food shortage
Officials' share: The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (created during Aquino era) – the fractioning of land to the low-funded, less agriculture and management trained, family-first-oriented soil toilers upshot to national food shortage and reliance on Thai and Vietnamese rice.
Public's share: We did not plan our family size. Pro life is not being just concerned by the living and what the living will eat now but what the living will eat in the coming years. Besides, those who were entitled of land grants sold them to subdivision realties and kept on rallying down Mendiola to get more share with the thought of free profit by selling it to awaiting factory builders. And those who left it tilled wasted great amounts of land and rice over experiments on fertilizers and insecticides, neglecting additional assaults to the environment to which our agricultural produce is dependent of. Where is our social sense of right and wrong? Our concern to what amount of rice will be left to feed the future? We only appeal to appease our churning stomachs, and worry less of other churning stomachs in some points in the Philippines, at some points of time.

Case 2: Corruption
Officials' share: The Devolution (enacted during Ramos era) – the passing on of authorities to local leaders sponsoring the padrino system or modern day feudalism. Each applying public employee must be of the same political party of the governor or mayor. Each local venture must cut some percent of its low budget for the officials and must scream the lines: “This blah blah was completed through the efforts of Mayor Blah Blah...” Each huge affair must be permitted by local heads or left ineffective. Each public sponsorship such as social service aid for indigent hospital patients must bear the name of the congressman involved.
Public's share: We pampered these politicians by voting them, by picking them as Ninongs and Ninangs to our weddings, by tagging with their rallies or even campaigning for them. And finally kept eyes shut from their faults out of “utang
na loob” or debt of gratitude. In so doing, we became the padrinos of the
padrino system in our locality.

Case 3: Low Standard of Education
Officials' share: The low teacher: student ratio, the shortage of school infrastructures, books and equipments, the low standard of teaching as projected by almost useless graduates is perennial in other areas in the Philippines. All attributed to the high cut off in education budget by higher officials and the devalued accreditation.
Public's share: Though Filipinos culturally are concerned of their young finishing their schooling, only a few are concerned what their children have actually learned from school. Basically, education of the young is in part a parental concern. Not all parents peeked through the mental works of their children. All their concern is to see the cross the stage in wearing black toga, holding a diploma and sending them money back for their “now finished parenting.”

Case 4: Frailing Health Programs
Officials' share: There are still people who have not seen a doctor for life and dwells in areas far from the already called Rural Health Units. The government can not also raise descent salaries to draw back abroad going doctors and nurses due to lack of public funds, which can be attributed to low income tax which can not be raised due to meager individual income. For me the amount from Philhealth program is good enough based on the government's financial status.
Public's share: Please don't misquote me but human health is more dependent on heredity and individual discipline than public policies. We can not blame heredity. We just have to practice discipline. He who kept his fever for weeks, his flu for months or his cough for years without medical consult will less likely get immediate resolution. A lot of patient were brought to the ER were at the terminal stages of their illness. And most of them have diseases related to their chronic smoking and heavy alcohol drinking.

Case 5: Unhomely Public Housing
Official's share: They government was only the end of blame for their self-made homelessness of these aspiring city dwellers and so the poor parent responded by creating housing projects and relocation sites. These were often build in rush with inconvenient facilities and set far from urban sprawl thus have a common side effect of driving these squatters away from their source of livelihood.
Public's share: Everyone clamored for a roof above his head but not all tried to find his own way to have it. Who told them to live the roof they were born and grew in? Who told them to settle to urban areas and build bamboo stilts over river banks and shorelines or assemble pieces of paper, wood and metal along railways, over dumpsites or under the bridge? And now they clamor for a descent roof.

We, the Filipino People who forms the Republic of the Philippines are part of its illness had to partake in its rehabilitation for national cause and not just nonsensically assemble down the main streets with self-importance in mind.

Reaction please.