Split priorities
“Why are there so many high walls in your country?” asked a Japanese scholar upon his visit to Manila. He was referring to the very stark reality before him where the boundary between the poor and the rich was, and remains to be, so clearly marked.
“Isn’t the Philippines a country of believers, where everyone is treated and accepted equally before God?”
That is a question that every Filipino deserves to give serious thought about really.
And the division is not only evident among the rich and the poor. There are so many socially-constructed gates and walls dividing our people really.
It is amazing how there are still those who can still say or even boast, with a straight face, that we are a country of believers, mostly Catholics!
Surely the cynics will say, “where did your God go? He seems to have left your country and your people!”
We are again seeing another clear division of our people at present. Priorities are split among the majority of the Filipinos and the so-called elected and their cohorts.
While it is very clear that millions of our people need basic, essential items for basic survival - food, clothing, shelter, steady jobs with sufficient wages-, the priorities of government officials seem to be how to spend public funds to maintain their power - economic and political!
Recall the present preoccupation of those in government now. There is a move to revive the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. There is a plan for government to go on a spending spree for infrastructure!
Our people clearly need food and homes, the officials instead spend for roads and bridges. Our people need jobs and clothes, the officials instead want to spend billions for a nuclear plant!
And this is not just any ordinary nuclear plant that they want to spend billions for. This is a nuclear plant that will be built on an earthquake-prone area. This is a nuclear plant that cannot afford even just a slight mistake that can annihilate people and even a whole nation!
Experts during the Cory administration listed so many crucial defects in the present nuclear plant that this present government wants to revive. The defects are still there and just as risky and dangerous for our people and our nation. And they want to revive this, despite the real basic needs and priorities of our hungry, of our homeless, of our jobless? Why?
Why is there a rush to spend so many billions of precious pesos for non-essential projects like the nuclear plants and infrastructure? Is it because the next election is very close and these billions will be used to prepare for that big event to allow those in power now to continue holding on to their reign?
Energy security is, of course, necessary but between immediate food security and future energy stabilization, which do you think should be prioritized? Between risky nuclear energy and safer and less expensive but just as effective energy sources, which do you think should be prioritized? Between food and roads and bridges, what do you think do millions of our people need now, urgently?
Why is this government not prioritizing our people and their essential needs? Why do those in power prioritize projects that will maintain them in their positions of power instead? Why do we allow public funds to be abused by those who are in power?
Split priorities between the rulers and the ruled reflect the great divide that is so prevalent throughout this society that professes to be a country of God-believers.
Split priorities exist where rulers think they are gods and that their kingdom here will last forever. History and divine justice, surely, will prove them wrong?
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