There’s so much on our plate today that, as we approach a new year, our most pressing duty is to clear it of various junks, from fakes news to fake rice, that not only crowd out our priorities but mess our understanding what’s important.
First off, rice. There’s seems to be a national hang-up on a cheap rice, we still look forward to a day when it will go back toP25 per kilo, a constant reminder, that we yearn to live back in the old days. It will not happen even as promised by no less than the highest official in the land, even as history is rewritten somewhat, but no thanks.
As we wish for cheaper staple, we forget the quality. Fake rice or its equivalent is mixed in the trade many people complained if there’s an attempt to poison our system to make it more pliant or compliant. Whether it’s intentional or not, the problem really is we seem to lose touch of reality ,we take it for granted.
Once upon a time, a queen lost her head along with a kingdom when she arrogantly told her people to eat cake for want of bread. Some day, people might just do that for fake rice. In the meantime, can’t the government look into the nagging suspicion that fake rice is really being sold in the market before things get out of hand?
We were once a healthy and wealthy nation, we were second to Japan after it bombed Pearl Harbor to smithereens. Now, we want Japan to join our forces to patrol the West Philippine Sea to stymie a neighbor bully claiming sovereignty by virtue of a mysterious, if not mischievous, line. In politics, whether local or international, there are no permanent friends or enemies,only permanent interest. Sara or GMA, please rise.
Look, on the domestic front, the unity team appears unravelling. The denial is the exception that proves the rule. For one, there’s the incessant heads-up that a team from the International Criminal Court (ICC) is on its way to make the case for the so-called crime against humanity during the dark days of the drug war. The Supreme Court has just released its ruling on the use of confidential fund, and some are not pleased. It”s final not because it’s not able to make mistakes but it says so.
There are rumors of destabilization against the administration of the new kid (not really a neophyte) on the block to serve notice that someone may still have it to create some trouble politically. That includes parroting the bad news coming from an old kingdom which believes that it is mandated by heaven to be the next hegemon to replace an old one. It may not be soon, but there’s a plan to invade a small island nearby, depending on their reading of Chinese astrology.
But hard science is standing in the way of an otherwise perfect plan; which proves that there s no such thing in an imperfect world. New bases are now in place to frustrate that plan. Modern tools of war are also being touted, not too far from the target, to break glass, in case of emergency. It’s giving a president- for- life somewhere in the neighborhood a headache. In the meantime, another president is pressing the issue on number: the more, the merrier. More patrols are coming on the horizon to navigate the terrain of an important sea lane.
Meantime, a former senator is crying “repent” all over the place, after she was freed on bail. First off, she’s telling those behind her incarceration for nearly seven years, their days are, well, numbered. Witnesses against her had fallen on the wayside on their own accord. The latest is a general who was not to proud about the great lies he and other witnesses had been cowed, under duress, to tell the world, and now they’re untelling it. Now, the father of all lies is being exposed.
Her fellow senators may also admit mea culpa, given a time of reckoning will strike 12 in the mid-term election next year. Some of them have a moist eye on another term, and that may mean eating crows. The senator may be the unlikely black swan that would change the color of politics, even how people view patriotism.
Will allowing the ICC to have its way in the probe against a former president now issuing veiled against what is supposed to be an ally ,unpatriotic? Of course, it is, according to a former president. Of course, it is, according to the president‘s loquacious sister-senator.
There’s a time for everything under heaven, according to Solomon. It’s the subject of a serious study, according to the Junior, not of Solomon, but of another wise dictator,who once dreamed of being a philosopher-king and ended up being kicked out of office in a peaceful revolution. In other words, those behind the war drugs may themselves end up behind bars for the death of between 6,000 to 30,000 people. S olomon had an easier task in solving the maternal dispute between two women. The ICC faces a tougher challenge.
Will the senator also become now the symbol of the real opposition as opposed to those who are merely sourgraping or salivating for power? The common denominator will be a former president who believed to be the author of many things gone wrong under his watch. A president is supposed to solve problems, not create them. Time will tell how far he has gone wrong, indeed.
The priorities for the government are clear. Fake rice must be addressed. Better if the price is right, not exactly cheaper. Remember history, as George Santayana warns, not rewrite it. Injustice must be corrected or punished. Taxes must be paid and unpaid taxes must be settled, not swept under the rugs of power. Remember an American senator who once told a former dictator: cut and cut cleanly. There’s no substitute for cleaning up one’s plate, even an ally’s. ASAP.
