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Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Obenieta: From the pet cemetery to the precincts
By Myke U. Obenieta
SOUND OF MOSAIC
If you deem yourself doggone, it’s likely you haven’t been vaccinated yet with the optimism of this idiom: every dog has his day.
The way that phrase preens, cock-sure at the mirror of the inevitable, you’re not entirely farfetched if you fancied that some politicians could have coined the comfort of such cliché. Such certainty, and how it sounds so unbreakable. If you were born yesterday, it would be breezy to believe so.
Recently, the Cebu City Pound yapped how it’s in dire need for a new cemetery for dead stray dogs. So far no politician, from a species renowned for their smell in identifying a problem and finding a solution (recall that joke about a candidate who promised to carve out a river so he can have a bridge built) has come out in the open for the sake of dead dogs. Canines can’t vote, to begin with, and there’s a limit to which a vote-hungry political animal can go in the name of welfare.
According to the reports, the City Pound has also made it known “that countless stray dogs have yet to be seized to satisfy our ‘zero askal’ goal and effectively eliminate carriers of rabies in Cebu.”
Then again, even if the City Pound will have the means to a successful end, that doesn’t mean we’re now far from the season of the snarl.
Now that the moon for May’s election is starting to wax for next year, you can howl all you want about yet another exercise in futility. But, ever so sunny, the politicians would be glib enough to tell everyone else that you must be an old dog if their new tricks can’t take and sweep you off your feet.
And if you still continue to trash and kick them out of your ken, wouldn’t you only be giving them the privilege to be pitiable, if not worthy for the gullible with for-underdogs-only sympathy. No matter if, really, they’re only foaming in the mouth.
For your tender mercies, there’s just no escaping these untamed creatures from wagging their tails and licking at your heels from now on down to the voting precincts.
To say that politics is a dog-eat-dog arena is arguably not to bark at the wrong tree. Already if our ears are sharp enough, the growls are getting louder as the alarums become shrill. Consider this season’s hue and cry sputtering down to one sound and fury: destabilization.
Hear how a group, calling itself “Samahan ng Mamamayan Ayaw sa Hunta at Destabilisasyon,” is honing its teeth. Oops, if you’re smelling politics, the group’s Visayan chapter makes it clear as it explains how it has come together to “oppose and expose” all forms of destabilization plots and to build a strong republic: “We are not related to Gloria. We do not want to include politics. We are for the protection of the republic and we created this group on our own initiative.”
Sniffing politics behind the tracks of headlines— bank robberies, kidnappings, bombings, exposes, mutiny, and political bickering— the group has sent the signal loud and clear: we’ll have our hands full bracing for those fit to be tied.
Or, we— who often make pet peeves out of politicians— might as well on the back of mad dogs go for a ride.
(Michael U. Obenieta welcomes your comments at his e-mail address: yomyko@yahoo.com)
(October 7, 2003 issue)
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