The water crisis as a top election issue

How can citizens remain loyal to a government that can’t even assure constant and uninterrupted water supply?

How can people remain in allegiance to a nation that is incompetent in managing water supply and distribution? The current crisis confronting the country is a result of decades of notoriously reckless neglect by public officials and other social, economic, and political leaders of the nation. This is also the inevitable consequence of the unabated ravishing of our environment, the insatiable greed of loggers and miners, the corruptions of officials in DENR and other agencies, and the lack of care for nature by people in general. All the past presidents neglected the universal truth that clean and potable water is a vanishing resource.

Only President Duterte has the will and skill to order the closure of Boracay because people were destroying the natural balance, businessmen were dumping waste into the sea, residents were building structures in restricted areas. The local government had been supposedly abetting the ravishing of the natural habitat, for reasons that we are not sure of; money, malice, plain stupidity, and ineptitude. Only Duterte has the firmness and the uncompromising stance to order the cleanup of Manila Bay, which was neglected by PNoy and all his predecessors. Only Duterte is looking at cleaning up Palawan as well, then Bohol. Why not Moalboal, Badian, Oslob, and northern and central Cebu, especially Lapu-Lapu too? Some hospitals were reported to have dumped their waste in the waters there.

Why is the issue of water crisis connected with the ravishing of our environment? You don’t need a Master’s degree to figure that out. Use common sense. Look at the mountains of Cebu, at our rivers, lakes, springs, and shores. Are there any clean bodies of waters and green watersheds left? The forests have been destroyed, the hills and valleys have been transformed into housing projects or golf courses. The greed of businessmen, many of them funded by foreign interests, has set aside the future of the nation. They have desecrated our national patrimony, all in the name of the almighty profit.

That is why this coming election, and in any future election, the water crisis should be an issue. Let the voters look at the track record of the candidates. Are they somehow linked with loggers, miners, or other destroyers of the environment? If they are guilty in one way or another, then they should be exposed, publicly condemned, and denounced in the strongest terms. These rascals are worse than drug lords. Drugs kill hundreds or thousands. The destroyers of our environment kill whole nations and generations. They destroy our water source. They are the worst murderers.

Any government that refuses to punish these scoundrels in Philippine society should be replaced by a truly caring and compassionate government that can assure the people of a truly just and humane society, a nation with enough clean and potable water. The Duterte government is on the right track in caring for our habitat. Those who oppose its sound policies should not be voted.