The debris on this city’s streets, mainly in residential areas, was super thick in the aftermath of the New Year’s Eve revelry with the traditional fireworks.
Driving home from a New Year dinner and countdown, I passed many streets that were nearly impassable because of the riot of firecracker festivities.
Debris and assorted pyrotechnic paraphernalia were left abandoned on the ground, in the middle of streets, neglected by irresponsible reveling residents, there to stay overnight, waiting for the morning street sweepers.
This kind of mindless and inconsiderate behavior is typical here. Besides the half-hour or so of fire cracking mania at the crack of the New Year, people go to public places in anticipation of the annual transition to a brand-new year and leave tons of garbage.
Food left over, plastic wrappers and all kinds of rubbish are left behind, with the culprits unmindful of the sanitary and environmental effects of their thoughtlessness, not to mention the effects on cleanliness and public order.
Gun owners, usually of unlicensed ones, fire their weapons in the air during the midnight countdown at New Year’s. Every year, the authorities warn people, including and especially the police and military, not to fire their guns to ring in the New Year.
Being typically hardheaded Filipinos, many gun lovers disregard the government’s ban on firing weapons.
Tragically, this year a precious seven-year old girl in suburban Caloocan City got hit from such a stray bullet from New Year revelers and died the following day at hospital. A boy in Mandaluyong City met the same fate. In a non-New Year-related incident several days later, another gun owner just went berserk and shot seven people to death and injured several others.
To think that this year the government, led by the Department of Health, spearheaded an insistent campaign to dissuade people from buying and lighting firecrackers because of the risk they pose to revelers, specially inexperienced children.
Despite the noted reduction in the use of firecrackers this year because of the government’s warnings, close to 1,000 people, including many kids, still got hurt, losing their fingers and worse.
People here are simply hardheaded. There’s something peculiar with Filipinos’ social behavior. We seem to do what the government wants us not to do. Filipinos hate rules, we like to disobey the law. Maybe it’s our way of getting back at government, or more precisely at politicians, whom we perceive as our oppressors and abusers.
Disobeying the law is our equivalent to raising our middle finger at the government, of retaliating against our abusers.
People litter everywhere, oblivious to general public order. Cigarette butts, candy wrappers, discarded food and many other unwanted objects are thrown indiscriminately around. They’re what the American writer James Fallows called signs of a flawed society. Filipinos couldn’t care less about common public areas. If it’s not ours, then it’s not our concern.
Call it a lack of love for one’s own, a lack of a sense of community, a lack of civic responsibility. That’s the Filipino way.
Go to a public restroom here and you will instantly feel a strong need to get out immediately because of the overpowering stench and the uncleanliness of the place. Ironically, most Filipinos are known to be fastidious and particular about the way their own homes look (and smell!). And yet public facilities are the opposite. Even in some expensive places like hotels and restaurants their facilities are not at all hygienic.
There is deliberateness in this behavior of Filipinos. It’s intentional. Rebelliousness, antisocial, anti-authority, contrarian-ness or whatever, Filipinos do it on purpose.
Filipinos drive recklessly and inconsiderately intentionally. We park anywhere we like and don’t care if that would inconvenience the public. We litter on purpose. We vandalize public areas and facilities. We leave our own garbage for flies, rats and other vermin to feast on in public areas like street corners and sidewalks. We even urinate in public against walls, electric posts and other convenient structures.
People one would think would be more responsible in their social behavior are equally guilty. Besides the general lack of cleanliness and order, many establishments operate illegally, without proper permits or government inspection. Illegal wares are sold openly, including pirated CDs and other merchandise.
Bus operators send out fleets of vehicles that are not properly licensed, many times bearing fake license plates or duplicates of plates already attached to other vehicles that ply the roads simultaneously. The violations are willful and in-your-face!
Where will all this behavior take us?
Unless and until Filipinos work together as a nation of law-abiding citizens, nothing will come out of any effort by the government to build the country into a strong, vibrant and well-functioning state.
Until we work together to build a strong, cohesive and united country, we will never succeed in nation-building. Until every one of us carries our weight in the traditional and admirable Filipino system of “bayanihan” or united effort, we will never mature into a viable, vigorous and respected nation.
I’ve often quoted the apt self-discovery by the comic-strip character Pogo, who exclaimed: “We have met the enemy and they are us!” We are truly our own worst enemy.
We can no longer blame the Spaniards and the Americans for being what we are today. The bad old boys have been gone a long time and we’ve been on our own many years. Whatever we are today is the product of what we’ve done to ourselves, to our country, to our reputation, even to our psyche. We are a flawed society because we made ourselves so, there’s no one else to blame.
We are self-destructive. The masochist in us enjoys the self-flagellation. We claim to be an intelligent people, but if we are, then how do we explain what we’ve done to ourselves, what we’ve become? How do we explain that there are many bright Filipinos around? Is it because there are too few of them, compared to the total population, to make a difference? Or is it because they’re not being used the right way in order to create and maintain a stable and smooth-functioning state and an exemplary citizenry?
Whatever is the cause, we had better find a solution before it’s too late. Despite President Benigno Aquino III’s efforts to reform government, social behavior and people’s attitudes, his exertions will not be able to turn the country around. Habits and attitudes are too set to be amenable to change. Certainly not in six years, or even a decade. At best, the President can only plant the seeds for reform. But a complete overhaul will take a herculean attempt involving the next several heads of state and generations.
Meantime, every year we are left with meaningless deaths, mutilated limbs, mountains of debris, and an utter lack of responsibility for our wild revelries.*****
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