Saturday, August 16, 2008 Speak Out: Mayor's unprecedented act By Joseph M. Dabon Basak, Mandaue City
THE Filipino prides himself of living in the only Catholic country in Asia.
But hidden by the shadow of the Cross, are loose guns not found in other Asian country in quantity and variety.
The country is a veritable garrison of rosaries and guns.
An enigmatic combination only found in enigmatic Filipino.
Except for those belonging to gun clubs who waste their money burning powder for the sake of leisure, a Filipino’s inclination for guns, legal or otherwise, is anchored on his imagined need for “self defense.”
This, by itself, reveals a Filipino’s illogic because we are known the world over for being friendly and can smile even at the most adverse of circumstances.
So who are these guys defending themselves from?
From their own twisted sense of self-importance.
A Filipino hungers power and recognition as he hungers for food.
Perhaps for lack of anything better to be proud of in the global arena where we are subjected to a daily grind of corruption, illegal entrants, prostitution, white slavery, drug trade, immorality, political thievery, etc., in blind reflex, the Filipino hungers for the need to give bent to a frustrated ego over something and someone.
And the easiest pushovers are fellow Filipinos endowed with wisdom to know that that guns don’t kill but people do.
And there is never a shortage of Filipinos not minding to kill a fellow Filipino even over a grossly inane thing as having stared too long at someone.
That that Province has allowed an illegal gun industry to thrive unchecked is an eloquent manifestation of the Filipino’s desire to posses a firearm whatever way possible.
The more powerful the gun and the more illegal it was obtained, the higher the ego.
Then in a bizarre twist of events, the mayor of Cebu City, a foremost city in central Philippines, was photographed with a holstered firearm while breaking up a gathering of workers peacefully and rightly expressing public indignation against their employer – long considered as the epitome of labor exploitation.
To-date, nothing more comic and disgusting has ever graced the front pages of our local newspaper than the photo of the City’s mayor, looking dour as usual, trying to project an image of invincibility over hapless and unarmed workers with a gun strapped around his waist.
It is comic because not even a village idiot can imagine the mayor’s capability to inflict harm except upon himself and it is disgusting because nowhere else in the world can one see a prime city’s chief executive break up a completely peaceful and harmless expression of a constitutionally-guaranteed right.
Winning hearts and minds is one of the primordial tasks of leadership.
The mayor of Cebu City, in the eyes of those hapless workers, exhibited an unprecedented act of thuggery.
