IN our village in Mandaue City, you can tell the passage of time by the worsening smell of uncollected garbage.
That’s when you confirm once again that garbage collection avidity is highest at Christmastime.
The telltale signs never failed. From two weeks before Christmas Day until one week after New Year’s Day, the garbage truck roared its entry everywhere. And the garbage collectors were chirpy.
What a stark contrast to these past weeks’ behavior. Neither garbage truck nor collectors in sight, and in their stead are garbage items rotting everywhere, their stench wafting into living rooms and dining rooms.
So we keep the window jalousies closed, the better to ward off the stench from creeping into our homes.
Why is this happening? Where are Mandaue City’s officials? True, the election campaign is very much on, but can we have some public service, please?
Which makes us wonder---are Mandaue City officials’ houses smelling too, their uncollected garbage amassing as well? Or are taxpayers’ money just spent on delivery of services only to these officials?
Whatever happened to the “Gawad Pangulo sa Kapaligiran Award” it received for two consecutive years in 2000 and 2001 for being the “Cleanest and Greenest City” in the highly urbanized category?
Time was when election campaigns saw more vigorous and fervent delivery of services from both officials and candidates alike. Roads got asphalted, and even private subdivisions benefited from candidates’ desire to earn “pogi” points.
Not this time around. So, is there even an election this May in Mandaue?
Then there’s garbage of a different kind---that noxious, toxic and depleting to our emotional and psychological well-being.
It goes right into our bedrooms, reaching farther and deeper than the rotting garbage outside our gates.
We used to hear it from local politicians masquerading as radio blocktimers. There they’d go into name calling, spewing vindictives or expletives at their opponents or critics. And we’d go wishing they learned to take the higher ground like the U.S. politicians.
Not anymore. The Americans have learned the foul-mouthed ways of Filipino politicians.
Republicans Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are unabashedly trading verbal barbed wires. Rubio makes sexual innuendoes about Trump’s small hands, Trump repeatedly calls Cruz a liar, and Trump ridicules Rubio about ear sizes.
As if this was not bad enough, Trump’s supporters and protesters clash, and their candidates blame each other for inciting the frays.
Over here, even the usually gentlemanly Mar Roxas allowed himself to trade challenges with Digong Duterte about slapping. Fortunately, that’s past them now, and didn’t deteriorate into hair pulling.
In a taxi headed back to Manila airport, the driver said he still had not firmed up his mind about the presidential election.
Poe is “bagita,” Santiago is sick, Roxas is tailing in the surveys, Binay can’t shake off the accusations of plunder, and Duterte is a shameless womanizer.
So, it has come to this, choosing between the new, the tried, and the tested on who’s the truest to rid this nation of its mounting garbage, the drugs and the dregs.
(lelani.echaves@gmail.com)