IT APPEARS that many of what’s happening around us now throw us back to the dark days of Martial Law.
Just recently, 14 farmers accused of having involvement with the New People’s Army were killed in Negros Oriental. Last December, in the same area, there was also a spate of killings, and was done in the name of the drug war. The famers were accused of peddling drugs. How is that possible? You earn lots of money from the illegal drug trade, so why would those poor farmers even bother to toil every day under the harsh heat of the sun if they were really into illegal drugs?
The stories that the police or the army tell us are simply unbelievable. Are they being paid by businessmen to help drive away farmers from their homes so that businesses can go about their business unhampered on vast tracks of land? What happens to agriculture? To food production?
If you look around, our insitutions are being invaded by the usual corrupt politicians. So what’s this change that they are talking about? We have merely come full circle to the old ways, to the old and ugly ways of politics.
I talked with a foreigner a few days ago, and he asked me why the Filipinos seem to put up with our corrupt politicians and why they keep winning elections. I felt ashamed for a moment being a Filipino.
For, indeed, why do we keep on voting for these people? Don’t we have enough choices in the first place? Are we running out of options?
I think President Rodrigo Duterte has done more harm than good. Never have we been more divided than now. It used to be that we had just one common enemy, Ferdinand Marcos the dictator, but it seems a bit more complicated now. This is getting harder to figure out. (By Ramon Tolentino, Talisay City)