Paris — walang kaparis

The classic Filipino saying about Paris is "Paris – Walang Kaparis" meaning "Paris is beyond compare." How the United States government has issued a travel warning to its citizens about the dangers of traveling to Paris at present where last Saturday 918 cars were torched overnight by young people and 570 people have already been arrested. Worse, the violence is spreading to the outskirts of other cities such as Tolouse, Rennes, Naantes and Lille. So far, 2,000 automobiles have already been burned by arsonists. The cause of arson is usually to collect insurance, in this case it is to sow terror.

We don’t know what is happening to the world. First, there were two major natural disasters – the hurricane that thoroughly destroyed New Orleans and the earthquake that completely demolished South Asia. As if the world did not have enough problems, now we are coping with riots in Paris and other cities in the old world.

We, of course, feel sorry for the victims of all these disasters and we are glad that the whole world is responding to do what it can for the victims of these natural calamities. But more than that we cannot but just be thankful to God for sparing the Philippines from both natural and man-made disasters. The irony is that instead of people enjoying the peace and order that we very fortunately have, the only active response that we see so far are the senseless Gloria step-down demonstrations. That is a perfect waste of time, money and energy. GMA will not and should not step down. She has announced that if her plans do not miscarry, the Philippines will be a developed country in two decades. Let us support her program for progress.

All one has to do is watch TV to see how New Orleans and South Asia are struggling just to recover from the separate devastations they have undergone to realize how fortunate the Philippines is so far. Watching the ordeal New Orleans and South Asia are undergoing reminds us of Manila after the Second World War. Manila was the second most devastated city next to Warsaw. We have not only recovered from the devastation, we now have the city of Makati that did not even exist before the war.

Again, let us do away with useless demonstrations and support the administration’s program for national progress. What we must do is to develop our economy in order to provide more jobs for the people. We must all do our part. We must live simply and invest our savings where it will do the most good. Let us take advantage of the peace and order that we have by using it not for enjoyment, but in order to attain progress. Our main goal should be to provide more jobs.

There is a song that says, "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me." That is the right start. Next we must have peace in the country and the whole world. The Second World War was supposed to be the war that ended all wars. Now, we still have wars and worst, international terrorism which is just a euphemism for war. And this is at a time when our world is now supposed to be a global village. Our aim should be to make it a peaceful village.