“I love the Philippines, it is the land of my birth”…or so they say.  “I am proud to be a Filipino”…and so they say.

And so the games begin.

They rally us to their cause but one wonders whose cause and at what cost.  They say they represent our interests but how do they know our interests when they haven’t really spoken to us for a year.  They only re-appear at election time if only to get our votes.

There are those who genuinely go into the community with the intent of giving a part of themselves.  But I wonder sometimes – what can they give when they themselves have not. How can they speak on our behalf when they cannot.

They go from attempting to climb the steps of power to taking a nose-dive for those Kodak moments.  Exposure, exposure – under exposed, over exposed – both draw blanks – oh, nothing else matters!

In the name of patriotism we are turned into “cash cows” and made to fill empty seats for visiting politicians.  They rally us to give till it hurts for a noble cause – only to realize that oops….we’re the only ones out of pocket.  In the name of the saints in heaven and the destitute on earth, tickets are flashed before our faces, pushed into our hands, slipped into our pockets or intentionally left behind.  The latter puts us in an embarrassing  predicament to either sell or buy them rather than return them.  To consciously and willingly volunteer means allocating a budget of approximately $200-$300 per month on tickets only to see much the same faces in the community circuit. 

These pretentious patrons of the poor are shifty, unscrupulous and are pretty good with OPM’s…. other people’s money. They can dip into grant funds or the collection for their own advancement. And since all is never revealed, we can only wonder how much of it is really handed over to charity after they’ve paid for their own tickets, bought favours and after spending for the after the event party. We’re paying to make them look good….helllooooo!!

And in desperation, people result to anything. Like playing “tumbang preso” – all scampering to kick a tin can to make it take a tumble.  Lines between right and wrong are blurred.  Our values flashed down the drain. All that matters is satisfying that insatiable appetites for attention or simply to advance their own names.

Then there’s the game of charades.  They remake, revise, and rework their pasts in the hope of dazzling us with their ordinary selves.  When these things happen, we need to carry “bull meters” (like a lie detector) to enable us to detect fact from fiction.  But since we are not equipped with espionage tactics, nor do we care to check, we suffer the consequences.  We take them at face value, tolerate them and unknowingly contribute to the idiocy that’s perpetuated.

So they call themselves patriots, frustrated of being unable to reach what they haven’t –desperately trying to vie for our attention, to fill their own voids if only to validate their selves.  But they fail to see what is needed to step up to the plate.  And poor us! We stand on the sidelines, forced to sit, watch and endure, amused by their antics that are of no real consequence to the Philippines or to us as a people.  We can only hope that we don’t get hit by the clash of the Lilliputians nor get caught in the scrum.

They’ll run, sprint.  But hitting a home run is most unlikely.

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PS.  And just when I thought it was safe, I caught a glimpse of one of the line-ups for the PCC elections. Oohh my, I see a familiar name – Bulseco! Wasn’t this the guy who until the 2007 elections did not know what PCC was about but just so happen to be there and conveniently voted on behalf of the Ateneo Alumni Association?  Well, well, well ….two years ago, Mr. Bulseco claimed to have been a victim of circumstances of the Amores’ farce elections and said “that’s why I don’t want to join any Filipino club.”  But since he’s back, Mr. Bulseco either likes it, or was roped into it again.  The eagle has landed and  this time he can’t claim to be there by accident to simply watch the game.