Cockroaches and crabs in life
I once lived in a rented room no bigger than 4 x 8 feet. It felt cramped as a prison cell but I had it all to myself. What made the experience unforgettable was stepping on cockroaches regularly and living in fear that one would crawl on your face or worse bite your face.
Seeing how my landlord had lived with his tenants behind the double walls for many years, I knew that asking him to fumigate the place would be pointless. So I simply waited for market day when everybody left the house and sprayed three extra large cans of scent-free extra-strong insecticide into every nook and cranny. I assumed that since the brand was scent free, no one would be the wiser of my stealth attack on the cockroaches. What I did not count on was that the house was the town hall of cockroaches and by the time the poison had taken its toll there would be one plastic pail of cockroaches out in the open. The pile was so high the residents could not even bear to look much less think that they had been living with hundreds of cockroaches!
That story is very much like our “WAR” against drug dealers. We have been living with the cockroaches of society that have taken away the lives, health and wealth and peace of mind of many Filipinos. Because they never crawled into our space or got to our face, we simply dismissed it as other people’s problems until we had an infestation. So the public voted an “exterminator” into office to get rid of the “cockroaches” dealing in illegal drugs. The problem with drug pushers is just like cockroaches, they have a colony that does what they do, or benefits from what they do. As long as there is one cockroach behind the plywood wall, or one drug pusher hiding in the barangay, it does not take long for them to repopulate their world with addicts, dealers, dependents and protectors.
Yes the sight of 400 dead drug pushers or a pile of dead cockroaches a foot high can be disturbing, but so is the thought of having to live with them for longer. Yes it is disturbing to see dead bodies and it is disturbing especially for those who did not do anything to stop it when they were in power and in a position to do so. That bunch continues to do nothing except talk about the problem and criticize the police who put their lives on the line at every “buy-bust operation.”
We all allowed the problem to get out of control and now we must go through the difficult process of “withdrawal” from drug pushers.
The “Filipino crab mentality” has often been portrayed by a bucket full of crabs where the crabs try to get out but never succeed because those who manage to crawl to the top of the bucket are pulled down by those below. In reality, the “crabs” only have one thing in mind and that is to get out of the bucket. The problem we have is not with the crabs but the bucket we are all in. So many Filipino mothers and fathers crawled out of the bucket NOT by pulling others down but by making painful choices and sacrifices because those who could help change or renovate the bucket were, and still are, only interested in remaining on top of the heap and not getting out of the bucket or breaking it!
When the pre-election surveys showed that Rodrigo Duterte would likely be the runaway winner, many well off Filipinos started to ask the proverbial question “Why.” It did not take long for rich people to go beyond the “Why Duterte” to “What” the rich or the well off failed to do. On countless occasions I heard the confessions of rich people saying “Because we failed to share, to give, to help or to do something about ‘poor’ peoples flight, the poor got their day by voting for their ‘Son of a Bitch’ a.k.a. President P.I.”
I read an article where the so-called leaders of big business, the investors in infrastructure, admitted that they were still fence-sitting ticking off the first 100 days of Digong to determine the new government’s priorities and directions before they the businessmen jump in and get their feet wet. All I’ve ever heard or read from the business sector, investors and the welloff are their aspirations, suggestions and wish list so they could have a better quality of life and an easier time of doing business in the Philippines.
They all want to get into infrastructure projects, build commercial-residential complexes, more and more condominiums, and win more contracts from government and make more profits provided they have
a level playing field. How ironic, the top five percent of Philippine business still think they need a level playing field. Try explaining that to the taho vendor, the
basyador, the guy who travels three hours from Talim Island to Barrio Kapitolyo just to sell 20 kilos of fish he carried on his shoulder all the way!
What we don’t hear from businessmen are unsolicited offers to build more jails that are modern or at least humane. Unsolicited offers to build juvenile protection facilities for the minors we want off the streets so that we don’t have to lower the age for criminal liability to nine years old. Unsolicited offers to build new wings for public hospitals especially in the provinces. Unsolicited offers to build proper facilities for the aged and abandoned so we don’t have to criminalize abandonment of parents by the children they abandoned or cannot properly care for them. Unsolicited offers to build dormitories in the many state universities and colleges that have a dire shortage of housing especially for poor but deserving scholars so that they don’t get rape off campus or commit suicide because of shame and dishonor for not having the money to continue their education.
Instead of repeating the same lies about crab mentality, lets try building something better than a bucket that has become too small for all Filipinos. Let’s help each other break out of the bucket or make a pond to thrive in and not be trapped in.