Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

The efficiency, or lack thereof, of the transportation system here in the Philippines has been all over the news in the past few weeks. The Spiderman 2 train scene that happened in the MRT, sans Spiderman, and the 10-kilometer parking lot that was once called NLEX are just a few examples of the problems that rage the whole Metro Manila.

The long lines at the North Avenue and Quezon Avenue stations of the MRT became an everyday part of the lives of those who need to ride the train to go to work and school. After the wreck that happened at the Taft Avenue station, the people had enough. They started asking the government officials if they are even aware of the plight of the everyday commuters that use our old and undermaintained railway systems.

The MRT Challenge was born and the people in the government responded by doing it. With the exception of some, they lined up with the commoners during rush hour to see for themselves the real situation. Photos were circulated in the social media to prove that they, in fact, did go through the hell of everyday commute.

And that is when things get a little messed up, for Juan dela Cruz at least. People started bashing these politicians that took the MRT Challenge. They said that these government officials are just showing off to the public they that are really interested in the difficult situation of the common people. To them, these politicians are just gearing up and making their names recognizable for the upcoming 2016 National Elections.

I do not know if their intentions are true, but we asked them to take up the challenge. They did it and now we are going to bash them for doing it? Isn’t that a bit ironic? Yes, their track records are not as clean as the dirty ice cream being sold on the streets but can we give them some credit for doing something that we want them to do, in the way that we want them to do it?

The Filipino people may be tired of all the wrongdoings that have been done to our country by the government that was supposed to serve and protect us but have we asked ourselves, “Am I not also liable for the bad things that are happening in our society?” We are irritated when the president points his finger to the past administration for the problems of the Philippines but how different are we from him? We’re also just pointing fingers at him for a job not well done.

We believe that all of our problems are caused by the government and that the government alone can solve it, but we fail to see that some of the simplest complications in our everyday lives are also caused by ourselves. The same problems that we encounter can be solved only if the populace can follow the simplest of all the rules.

We sit all day in front of our computers writing harsh comments on social media about how bad these Kotong cops are while we ourselves can’t follow basic traffic rules. We ask our government officials to stop making nonsense laws while we throw racist, ad hominem comments against our opponents when the national team loses a basketball game.

The point I’m driving at here is that this country won’t move forward if no one will move it. We wait for the government to make a move to improve our situation while we wait and see if anything will happen and since we believe that the government will not do its job, then nothing will happen. We believe that we are helpless. We believe that there is nothing we can do to help. We believe that this country will not change. One of my professors said that believing is a very powerful weapon, and that if we believe in something, it will happen. If only we, the citizens of this great republic, the very embodiment of this country, believe that things will change for the better, I bet that things will do change for the better.