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Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Obenieta: Ways of the warped
By Myke U. Obenieta
So to speak
How do you destroy tradition?
When being trendy has become an obsessive compulsion for many, nothing is more convenient than thumbing one’s nose at the whiff of things past. Where’s the geek, for instance, who’d slink out of his computer game and grab his guitar for a harana to his hinigugma ear-wired to her iPod? And where’s the lady yuppie who’d go to church wearing a veil on top of her hennaed hair cut like Halle Berry’s? Who’s stopping her from making the sign of the cross while her Sunday best plunges down her neckline enough for her crescent-moon tattoo to peek below her collarbone?
About castaway customs enough to elevate the quaintness quotient of Araling Panglipunan in the classrooms, the process of extinction goes on. While carrying the torch for the charms of a bygone belief system could throw modern chic in sepia light (Hey, isn’t retro cool?), this generation’s tendency is to eschew tradition as if it were a time-warped blight. When hip concerns narrow down options to what’s up or what’s in, nothing can be more dismal than being called traditional. As such, it would have been no sweat shrugging off the conventional.
Surprising, therefore, how it remains en vogue and poises to fix itself as a timeless national characteristic. Seems there’s no stopping traditional politics. See how many are flaunting their flair for it as time goes by. Because old dogs can’t learn new tricks, some styles just won’t die.
So went the topic again at the forum the other day in barangay Guadalupe where Sociology professor/columnist Randy David talked about the hue and cry on Charter change.
Government’s shift to parliamentary form won’t solve the country’s ongoing crisis, he stressed. “It will allow traditional politicians to stay in power,” frowned David who pushed for an overhaul in the Commission on Elections as a prerequisite for electoral reform. “Arrest people involved in the syndicates in drugs and gambling because they are corrupting our officials, where the money used in vote-buying comes from,” he averred. “Patronage should be removed because it is the source of the political problem.” Mass media is also to blame. It has “re-shifted our politics because people patronize their heroes in movies.”
Will charter change be just a new leash on the same dog? So asked New Jersey-based Richard Francisco (rwf803@yahoo.com) in his e-mail to this column. The country’s problems, he guessed, is not only about leadership going bad but also about an electorate gone daft.
New wave, or so Fransisco’s wisful thinking could usher in a political sea change. “Imagine if all our candidates face a people who demand that they stop joking, dancing, and mud-sling their way through a campaign. What if they focus instead on serious issues such as debt servicing, free quality education, agrarian reform, trade deficit, foreign investment, industrial infrastructure, social welfare and development, minimum wage & jobs, etc.”
On the eyeball-rolling current events, Fransisco laments: “These happenings are making us forget the real issues as to why the country has these many ridiculous problems in the first place. I mean, nobody is even talking about Erap’s plunder charges anymore. I bet his crimes will be forgotten soon. Look, the Marcoses are back in the political scene, and nobody’s minding it.”
Are we stuck with some traditional styles that do suck?
(yomyko@yahoo.com)
(August 2, 2005 issue)
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