License to excel

It's been more than a year, and I still don't have my driver's license.

 I did apply for its renewal.  I lined up behind new ADB employees who were being shepherded through by their handler (the new Manila residents probably shell shocked by their oh-so-pleasant introduction to Philippine government offices), taciturn men who were probably professional taxi drivers, and other representatives of the driving public. 

I went through the mandatory eye check by a medical professional who couldn't care less whether one could really read the eye charts (I was wearing contact lenses so my test went real fine). I filled up forms, waited patiently, and presented myself before various counters.

Admittedly, the process wasn't as painful as I dreaded it to be. I was probably out of there in less than an hour which, as we all know, is a miracle of sorts in this inefficient government bureaucracy that we have, with its nasty habit of stockpiling sullen civil servants.  I walked out relieved, brandishing my temporary paper license that's normally good for thirty days.

That paper license is still in my wallet today, more than a year after.  I check it once in a while, careful not to crease it too much or encourage cracking. I have been back twice to the Land Transportation Office, on the off-chance that the plastic ID card that is supposed to substitute it is ready for pick up, but alas, my disregard for the admonition that I should call first to check the card's availability keeps biting me in the butt.

There I walk up hopefully to the counter, eager to see my disaster of a picture immortalized on a shiny, indestructible and earth-unfriendly plastic driver's license.  But no, the gods of civil service would rather that my hopes be dashed.  In their zeal to make sure that they break new records of inefficiency, even after a year, the gods have made sure that the plastic hasn't made its way through a printing machine that probably isn't that expensive to purchase anyway.

 I leave crestfallen, convinced that yes, this government has yet to find a solution to the seemingly simple logistics of delivering a plastic card within a year, a difficult task that most schools and universities are capable of delivering to their student body in the span of much, much less than a school year (which, by the way, is shorter than a real year).

So that leaves us, where? We now have a new president who will take his post in a few more days.  Will he do a better job of cracking down on government officials intent on eking out a monthly salary via the exertion of the least effort possible?

President- elect Duterte has been vocal about crime and corruption.  Will he be as equally vigilant about government malaise?  Will we get better roads and transportation and medical benefits and labor protection?  Will service with a smile come beaming towards the citizenry?

 Will labor attaches abroad do a better job of protecting our domestic workers rather than preying on them and asking for sexual favors from the very citizens they are sworn to protect?  Will reproductive health facilities be finally made available despite the law that says they have to be made available and yet, recalcitrant legislators refuse to give condoms a budget?

Or something as simple as school textbooks. Will they finally be corrected for historical accuracy?  Will they finally teach the difference between a past and a future tense?  Will atrocious grammatical errors disappear? Will previous authors be trotted out for public shaming and then whipped before a frenzied grammar-Nazi crowd for all the falsehoods those shameless authors managed to perpetuate and the errors they failed to spot? (I have a slight vindictive streak).

So many questions for the new administration.  And yet the most important one, really, is, do I see my plastic card before it expires in less than two years, and I have to apply for a new one?