The problems that our country is encountering today are the results of the negative attitude that has enveloped our people through the years.
The negative attitude that permeates our society is the result of the collective disenchantment of the people on our elected and appointed leaders who succumbed to corruption and failed to live up to the expectation of the citizens and their constituents.
Because of greed, avarice and covetousness, this nation they call the “Pearl of the Orient Seas” has become a haven for crooks, petty thieves, ten percenters, extortionists, smugglers, drug and gambling lords, big-time operators and influence peddlers.
Our country’s environment and ecology have been unnecessarily wasted, its patrimony exploited by aliens in cahoots with the local elite, its marine resources gobbled up by intruders and our independence contravened by foreign powers and meddlers masquerading as human rights advocates.
Our young people – the youths whom Dr. Jose Rizal described as the “hope of the Fatherland” – are busy tinkering their hi-tech gadgets, unmindful of the dire circumstances they are in as increasing tuition fees, unemployment, soaring costs of staple food and commodities, agrarian and housing problems, inadequate farming outputs and supply continue to haunt the population.
These inequities are basically traceable to the cumulative negligence, inefficiency, incompetence and mal-governance attributed to the past administrations whose unreasonably ambitious leaderships were tempted and lured by personal obsessions of greatness and legacy.
Today, the entire Filipino nation is crudely struggling because its people have been caught flatfooted, napping and unprepared to cope with the avalanche of change.
For six straight years, we were lulled by the empty promises of a cult that described itself as trekking the straight path, spreading and distributing its messianic rhetoric like a surprised Christmas gift to a homeless street urchin.
As you all can see, only the well-entrenched elite – the oligarchs, the rich and the famous – are not complaining. They have nothing to worry about.
They need not worry because they don’t need to cope.
They don’t need to cope because they are not bothered by the inequities that hobble our society and the smooth flow of basic social services.
They are not bothered because they have no conscience.
They have no conscience because they don’t have a heart that responds humanely.
They don’t have a human heart that beats and pulsates because they are numb and callous.
They are numb and callous because they are not human beings.
A well-renowned preacher, writer and motivator once wrote: “The greatest struggles are not fought on the world’s battlefields. They are fought in human hearts as men and women deal with the pressures within which often defeat them.
The real enemies are forces such as fear, worry, inadequacy, inferiority, anger, frustration, hate, greed…and the inability to cope.” (Email your feedback to fredlumba@yahoo.com.) GOD BLESS THE PHILIPPINES!
