Not a circus

A lot of people are calling the ongoing political shenanigans a “circus,” which is not correct.

A circus entertains, it features skilled performers doing difficult and dangerous acts – precarious balancing acts, sometimes high up in the air, tangling with wild animals, etc. etc.

What these politicos are doing is hardly entertaining. They are behaving worse than playground bullies picking sides, than foul-mouthed fishwives wrangling over spoiled goods.

The only similarity – and this by a long stretch – is that what they’re doing is dangerous…but not for them. It is dangerous for us, the people, because it is our health, our economy, our very lives that are at stake: battered by a pandemic, economically on our knees due to business closures and rising prices of basic goods, a whole generation of students grappling with “blended learning” that leaves them hardly learning anything (a first year law student told me that, across all levels – a sister in junior high, another in first year college and she in law school – they’re all not learning much, and these are students with available gadgets and internet connection).

Yet we can not afford to give up; we must fight – for our country, for our future, for our selves. Look at the candidates beyond their “branding,” find out what they stand for – if they stand for anything worthy at all. Demand from these candidates concrete plans to address real problems – and when they do win, that they actually carry out these plans. – William m. Filemon, Parañaque City