Valdehuesa: Names and Faces of Abuse

EVERYONE should take note of those rotting campaign posters that remain on every conceivable surface of our city. They are like smelly scabs on an untreated wound, reminders of the impunity with which trapos inflict wounds on the body politic to weaken our democracy.

Behaving as if the law did not (does not) apply to them, those responsible for mounting this filth were (are) are the power-hungry, shameless, attention-grabbing trapos. Showing contempt of election rules, they plastered their names and faces virtually everywhere. They arrogated public and private places for their own use. In defying election regulations and ordinances they showed how unfit they were (are) for public office.

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Efforts by the Comelec and the PNP to remove or whitewash their offending posters and streamers proved no match for their venality. No street, fencing, wall, or bridge was spared by their vandalism. And the community seems helpless in the face of their arrogance, irresponsibility and lawlessness.

Perhaps these evidences of reckless venality should be left in place. Just leave them there to remind every passerby of the rotting names and faces of election violators and abusers of our environment. Leave them in place to remind the world of the hypocrisy and irresponsibility of power-seekers who dare to posture as guardians, protectors and upholders of decency and good government.

In leaving their mess to decay on the landscape, they make the city shabby and looking disreputable. What sort of governance can a community expect from these cynical characters? If they can’t (won’t) comply with so elemental a matter as poster-mounting rules, what qualifies them for leadership?

Not to be outdone, greedy capitalists also ape them, plastering streets, overpasses, overhead wires, trees, and lamp posts with misplaced advertising. Typically, none of them bother to clean up their mess. Why should they? The leaders don’t!

Let the public be now forewarned: They who violated our public and private domain with their self-serving attention-grabbing gimmicks are now on the way to take over the City Hall, the House and the Senate! They are now strutting about, expecting to be addressed as ôHonorable. “They will expect to be respected and glorified as our ôleaders.”

But let no one forget that the numbers game that these characters construe elections to be does not confer honor, respectability, or glory-only privilege. It is a privilege that such characters often use to lead the city and the nation down the path of corruption, abuse, and perdition.

Email: valdehuesa@gmail.com