Barely 3 years and our lot under Duterte

Barely three years in office, and the once mighty Duterte administration is no more. It has disintegrated. And we are left with nothing but an economy teetering to the brink of collapse, more than 15,000 Filipinos both the guilty and the innocent dead, a direction-less government, drugs out on the streets once more, this time, more affordable at 700 per pop, grafters getting their way, cartel lords laughing themselves hoarse straight to their banks and more people suffering from hunger more times than ever before. Look at the landscape. While we are all praises for the rise of new skyscrapers, new malls, new bridges and new roads, behind that tourist-sy mirage are a people suffering from poverty.

The promises that animated the minds of about 16 million Filipinos, of solving the drug problem in six months, of cutting down the number of people without job security, of pursuing the welfare of OFWs and of improving the lot of many, have all been relegated to the trashcan. What we have left are hundreds of hours of video showing a President cursing almost everybody he nicpicked. He has cursed God, priests, poor Filipinos, women, straights, gays, lesbians, people victimized by disasters, Joma and his NPAs, Muslims, Terrorists, Congressmen, Senators, cabinet people, Obama, Trump, a Canadian president, the United Nations, human rights activists, CHR chiefs, a frail old Australian nun, his disease, soldiers, cops, rowdy mayors, a governor, even his erring son and his girlfriend who got herself impregnated by an actor.

Yes, things changed. From 26 pesos per liter of diesel, we now have 46 pesos per liter. And the international price of a barrel has not even reached US$90. More farmers got themselves the brunt end of the stick when government failed to buy their stuff and food importers getting their way thanks to Public Relations.

Yes, our lives have improved because we now eat imported rice, pork, chicken, possibly even beef and veggies. From a very efficient agricultural resource of most Asians and Western countries, this country of ours is now an unwilling recipient of food stuffs from other countries like China which does not go thru rigid and strict inspections and passed off as good to eat.

And things really changed. We are being fed shit promises of futures secured thru foreign deployment and recruitment. We are being entertained beyond our expectations by the bloody galore of bodies lined up, all who fought cops during drug busts, of bodies buried in landslides, of bodies inside caves dugged up by irresponsible miners and of bodies of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) killed by their employers, their employer's governments and others, like white slavers.

While we are inured by all these, we are all enamored by the verbal theatrics of a Medical Technologist turned soft porn actress turn Asec and eventually, turn either a Congresswoman or a Senator. Imagine such a character writing laws that change our identity as Filipinos and rationalizing the killing not just of people but of morals which we, poor folks, only treasure as the only things we can pass on to our next of kin when we die.

These things I wrote are not fake news. They really happened. Of course, we can blame the system, the very system that produced these fine characters of our political tragedy. While we do so, we forget that these people are getting away with their dangerous and lethal antics that offend not just our sensitivities but our very souls as Filipinos.

I blame our faithless devotion to the Mammon. I blame our lack of faith in God, the God that tries every single time to prove that He exists in our lives. We are so concerned with how and where to get our next morsel of rice while we forget that God provides, every single time!

I blame these false prophets, both in the political, economic and religious spheres, who regale us with their promises of salvation, who promise to give us the relief we so desire for a very long time as a people, and who vowed to lead us to Eden, only to realize later on that we are being led to the slaughterhouse being run by IMperialist China and the United States.

O, my Motherland, I cry for you. I shed these tears because I now fear for the future of my kids. I am but only one but what about these millions who are trapped here, those who have rooted themselves in these lands and who are as hopeless and powerless as I am.

O, Inang Bayan, where are the patriots, the ones who truly care for the people! They are now wine sipping with the Oligarchs, playing their games and enjoying the praises of these people, actually parasites that suck the blood off my people!

There will be justice, I am definitely sure. Those who caused misery to my people, they will surely suffer. They will surely get those boils that afflicted the Egyptians the task masters of God's first people. They and their kin will get the punishment from God.

He, who gets fantabulous profits from higher fuel prices and uses this to build an empire, you know who you are, prepare for punishment. These seven big rice traders who manipulated the prices of rice, be prepared to leave this country. Those now profit from imports, get ready. It may not be now, it may not be this time, it may not even be with this government or the next, but surely, justice will be served. This is the immutable law of nature. As they say, those who sow, they reap.