KILOMETRIC LINES, phalanges more aptly, of commuters to the Metro Rail Transit stations desperately begged for relief from their government.
Disbelief is what was impacted to them:
“Yung MRT lang ba ang puwedeng sakyan doon sa mga rutang dinadaanan nito? Baka naman puwedeng matuklasan ‘yung iba pang mga options?”
Oblivious is Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma to the stations of the Cross commuters are subjected to every single working day, even outside of Lent.
Prompting them to challenge him to let go of his chauffeured, air-conditioned official vehicle, take a bus or any public transport so he may know, and, mayhaps, feel, if only for a short time, their daily litany of suffering and sorrow.
It’s uncanny, but Coloma’s self-indulgent ignorance reminded me of that misattribution to Marie Antoinette, who as consort to France’s Louis XVI was supposed to have riposted “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche (Let them eat cake)” upon being told the peasants had no bread.
Of course, the Queen was subsequently reduced by the Revolution to plain “Prisoner No. 280” and thereafter guillotined. Some fate we do not wish upon Coloma or anyone as callous to the plight of the Metro Manila commuters.
Still, we can’t help but wail and gnash our molars and grinders at Coloma’s insipid insensitivity. To the deafening public outcry that President BS Aquino III sack MRT General Manager Al Vitangcol III over the dysfunction teetering on total failure in the metro rail system, Coloma (un)reasoned that the congestion at MRT stations “comes from the natural increase in population.”
That, aside from what was cited above as “the propensity of commuters to use a particular mode of public transportation over another.”
Increase in population – the catch-all cause of all the country’s problems to this maladministration. Translated from the Filipino original, Coloma — visibly irked, as some media reports put it – snarled: “The increase in population, can you blame that on Mr. Vitangcol?…It seems a bit overreaching to blame everything on one official.”
Not as overbearing as instantly exculpating a palpably erring official. This, amid allegations made by no less than the Czech Ambassador that Vitangcol is the man behind the purported attempt to extort $30 million from Czech firm Inekon Group in exchange for the awarding of a contract to supply train coaches for MRT 3.
Coloma’s illogic in shifting the blame from Vitangcol for the MRT woes lends some credence to Ambassador Josef Rychtar’s lamentations that “infl uential people” are protecting Vitangcol.
Said the Czech envoy: “If you follow all the programs arising now in the MRT, you can see that Vitangcol has a very firm position. Nothing can move his chair, so I think that he is covered, he is protected.” Nothing new in those statements of the Czech ambassador, actually.
Covering up – malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance, plain ignorance too – being second nature to the BS Aquino administration. As in the issue of the DAP vis-à-vis the Corona impeachment, the Sabah (dis)claim, rice smuggling, the Yolanda non-response, the Zamboanga siege, to name but a few.
Come to think of it, the insensate Coloma is just channelling his boss’ brattish callousness to the plight of anyone below his lofty station. Remember the BS’ condescending “Bakit, buhay ka pa naman” to a Yolanda victim who complained he was shot at by looters in the immediate aftermath of the disaster?
And while at it, let us be reminded too of the BS’ mate, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas’ dismissive “Bahala kayo sa buhay ninyo” to Yolanda-devastated local government units for refusing to abide by conditions he set sine qua non to the provision of help by the national government.
So Coloma made an apology last Friday – awash as he was in a deluge of damnation by netizens – over what everyone but himself considered utter tactlessness. His apology though instantly turning into an alibi with his ir(rationalization) that he had taken public transport from time to time, indirectly suggesting that he recognized the hardships of commuters.
And that his suggestion of alternative rides merely “misunderstood.” Channel his boss again, Coloma did there.
Only last March, before Yolanda-victimized students BS Aquino III said: “I apologize if we could not act even faster but given what we had, were not present when it hit your region.
In anything else we are also students…and we want to do better next time, but again that shouldn’t have been the case.”
BS Aquino should have stopped there and all would have been well. But no, he had to outsource the blame elsewhere: “We have to rely on the local government unit to provide the backbone. They will tell us who is in need, where, what is needed and ‘di ba parang even just knowing who the people we will have to work with.
[But] that was not existent Sunday, Saturday…Two hundred ninety policemen were supposed to be in Tacloban City alone. They actually had 20 on duty. Everybody else attended to something else. They are all being investigated.
We [had] to bring in soldiers and policemen from other areas…” As it was with BS Aquino so it is with Coloma.
Apologies morphing to alibis. As I’ve written here once. Alibis the nation will not buy. Coloma makes the perfect mouthpiece for BS Aquino though.
