what spirit?

I am sorry but I am tired of seeing posts like this that put a (deceptively) positive spin on the suffering of many Filipinos because of our leaders’ inefficiencies. What Filipino Spirit? What resiliency? This is insulting. Nobody deserves to experience this, in the first place. Situations like this are not to be celebrated—they need to be solved.

If this is what they call “Filipino Spirit,” then I want to see the same thing, the same situation, for our barangay captains, councilors, mayors, governors, congressmen, senators, and even the president himself. These guys are culpable, through and through.

These days, proclamations of “resiliency” and “Filipino Spirit” have just become an excuse to shrug off and/or accept incompetency and the broken promises of our leaders. This only becomes problematic when the same leaders criticize anyone who seeks a better life by demanding more from them. Self-sufficiency should be enough, they would imply, as if we are forever immune to these calamities. Like a toxic lover who consistently takes advantage of you (and yet you keep welcoming that person into your life anyway), these leaders are the posterboys for abusive relationships on a national, political scale. 

An acquaintance argued to me that our leaders have nothing to do with these disasters, even going further by stating that “no country is prepared enough for Mother Nature, no matter how deep their drainage systems are.” 

Oh dear. Does this mean I have to put all the blame on Mother Nature for poor urban planning, undisciplined and ill-educated communities, inconsistent implementation of policies, substandard projects, absence of proper waste management, and government workers who do not do any work at all? Everything connects after all.

What this acquaintance of mine has forgotten or refuses to acknowledge is that the Philippines (and its leaders) is not equipped and just do not have the initiatives to handle situations like this, even if this country has been experiencing these situations regularly for decades now.

So yeah, I am tired of all this. If that guy in the photo is smiling, instead of praising it, I think we should all ask this question instead, louder than ever: “Why is this still happening?”


[ photo borrowed from this site ]