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Thursday, February 23, 2006
Garcia: The quick and the dead
By Pablo John Garcia
Breakfast at Noon
You can say all you want about the so-called “civil society,” most especially its “militant” mutations. But I still believe government officials everywhere have a lot to learn from them in the area of crisis response.
I am not part of any militant group (which, I guess, is a mutually beneficial situation), but I suspect that there is, in every one of them, a “quick reaction team” to respond to any crisis, natural or man-made.
Consider the Ultra stampede. Rescue workers had not cleared the site of dead bodies but Sanlakas already had it all figured, offering a quick analysis as to the cause of the deaths: extreme poverty, secondary to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
“It’s not 50 pesos to a dollar,” they said. “It’s 70 lives to the peso.” Exactly: they’re figures, so you figure that out.
Bayan echoed the post-mortem. Solution: Oust GMA.
Imagine what goes on in those quick reaction teams. I always imagine two-way radios crackling everywhere. “Are you sure it’s 70? Over.”
“That’s the figure we have so far, comrade. Over.”
“And your conclusion? Over.”
“I’m seeing the debris, comrade. Unmistakable doses of extreme poverty. Over.”
“The kind of strain that can be genetically linked to GMA?”
“Positive. Over.”
It was over in a minute. Sure, a few more links to US imperialist policies and the ills of globalization would have to be worked into the analysis somewhere, but that wouldn’t take much work. After all, everything, ultimately, is secondary to “US-(insert current President here) imperialism.”
Then Guinsaugon happened. While the rest of the country jumped into the caravan of rescue and relief operations, “civil society,” and militant groups jumped, too. Not into the caravan, but into conclusions.
“Environmental degradation. Over.”
“Secondary to GMA?”
“Roger.”
On TV two days ago, I saw a local group of militants holding a press conference. I recognized just one of them, a friend of mine, Vida Arcamo of Gabriela. Behind them was a streamer showing a caricature of the President and the words: “Queen of Disasters.”
The flow---or in this case, the mudflow--–of their logic was that, as long as GMA was President, disasters will continue. Solution: Oust GMA.
My wife, who has this uncanny ability to cut through complicated issues and sum them up in a single sentence said: “Oh, so that’s it. It’s bad feng shui.”
So as the President ordered P80 million released for a geological map of the Philippines, here in Cebu, local militants and their quick reaction teams proved that was unnecessary. What we need is not a study in geology, but in geomancy.
The militants beat everyone to it once again.
(pablojohn@gmail.com)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (February 23, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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