IT IS TIME TO OUST OUR DESPOTIC RULERS

This is what our tax money is supposed to go towards. But with just a span of six hours of rain brought by a tropical storm named Ondoy it already caused floods and submerged practically the entire Metro Manila with water, damaging several homes and all the thoroughfares impassable—bringing the Mega City of over ten million people to a virtual standstill. Flood waters were all over, catching people in the streets by surprise and finding themselves splashing, flapping and flipping through raging waters to save dear lives. Main floors of some buildings and houses are buried under water, scrambling inhabitants to the rooftops. There are some homes that are still sitting under four feet of water and some homes that are not going to be livable again. As of now, at least 52 people, including 42 in the province of Rizal, were left dead.

This was the worst-case scenario that I've seen. Flooding continues to plague the Philippines since time immemorial but the present flooding is the worst in the record history. This is attributed to poor drainage system, pollution, and garbage problem that have worsened the effects of the heavy downpour—the result of the failure of the government to catch up with the pace of the modern and ever changing world due to steadily increased commission of corruption. Just in the news this morning, September 26, 2009, a high ranking public official may find himself in hot water following allegations of mismanaging billions of pesos from the Road Users' Tax.

But the corrupt regime doesn’t seem to care mainly because they are not and can never be affected. In spite of the crisis plaguing the country the landscape is dotted with their mansions, their private jets and chartered planes flew instantly for drop-of-the-hat trips anywhere in the world as their random spur of the moment, on frivolous caprices of intermingled lust dictates; and that the people turn tail and run at their omnipotent power, money and invulnerability.

The Philippines is a nation with the wherewithal to be great. But I took sometime to ponder why it had become adrift and thrown into a perpetual third world country and one of the poorest. It has a population it cannot sustain when it would have been a land of milk and honey. Had our leaders not been greedy to enrich themselves in great measure, the image of the Philippines as one of the most corrupt on the face of the earth would not have been.

We can win an impossible war of survival even from the ashes of our own destruction. If we will it, it need not be a dream. It would require sacrifice, 100 times harder work than we could ever think if we want a new nation to burst onto the international scene. Then it’s time to start seeing a lusty cry of a newborn infant, yearning to breathe free.

In blood and fire heroes are born, and on a hot anvil is forged a great nation. With unbelievable bravery and heroism the new state survived. In blood sweat and tears is where history is unfolded and were reborn the vibrant character of proud citizens of a free and progressive State.

With stories of burning flesh from the ovens of subjugation embedded deep in our psyches, we must fight with the firm conviction that there is no alternative (ein brera) so that what has been taken from us would be returned to us as the rightful owner.

“There are pearls in each of us, if only we knew how to cultivate them with ardor and persistence”. “Our struggles in life go to the determined, not to the outraged; to the committed, not to those who are merely dramatic”.