Things fall apart

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 7/22/2013 / Daily Tribune

As I think of the State of the Nation address (Sona) day, the title of the first novel by an African writer I read some decades ago came to mind.
"Things Fall apart" by Chinua Achebe, the writer Africa believes is the Nobel Prize for Literature awardee that could never be due to Western colonialist fears of the truth. It's an entirely different setting and theme from what this column is about but the title is most appropriate for the state of things in the Philippines under the present regime and all the past 25 years after the establishment of the Yellow dynasty in the Philippines. The economy, the moral structure of society, the educational system, its politics, the foreign relations of the country, its territory, they are all falling apart and in shambles.

Before I proceed on to the Sona, there's an SOS from friends of new Bureau of Immigration OIC commissioner Siegfried Mison who has been the subject of media bombardment instigated by immigration BI employees.

I first heard the harangues on dzMM, then read some in newspapers. The issue is "padding" of fuel use during an earlier stint there, which reports say Mison had been reprimanded for already. I had the same experience as a neophyte government official in my time at the refugee center. It's a slip up, a minor infraction. To size up the problem I called up former immigration chief Bono Adaza. Bono lambasted the endemic corruption among many BI career employees, saying any clean-up will be met with brickbats. BI ne'er-do-wells may be fearing Mison. Last February, the Ombudsman ordered 45 BI employees sacked and 48 disciplined.

The Sona this year will be no different from all previous ones since Cory Aquino's first in 1987. It'll be the usual cover-ups of the destructive consequence the Yellow forces "reforms" that have wrought on the nation's governance, and socio-economic and political infrastructure. The Yellow's rule was paved by the intrusion of the US State Department in collaboration with the traditional oligarchy, primarily with the Makati Business Club, the Catholic hierarchy, many Western nurtured NGOs and "leftists," opportunist political opposition groups and band-wagoned Metro-Manila middle class and masa. Marcos had a program to build a nation, the Yellows had the program to profit and transfer such to foreign and local corporations of which they had interlocking ownership.

The only post-1987 Sona that spoke the truth was President Joseph Estrada's 1998 Sona where he declared the well-known fact that the Philippine economy was: Bangkarote (bankrupt). Two years later he was deposed for his incorrigible truth-telling and actions to resolve real problems. He prioritized restoration of peace and order and focused on trouncing the MILF, but that would have scuttled US plans to have a surrogate state in Mindanao. The Yellow crowd helped the US depose Estrada. Truth-telling and taking forceful action do not pay in Philippines politics. To be successful in Philippine national politics, one needs to feign belief in the country's sovereignty and democracy.

Today's Sona will be again an exercise in hypocrisy. Not just for BS Aquino III but for almost all members of Congress, the Senate, Malacañang and its Cabinet. Among media, mainstream broadcast media reporters on site, in Congress, will be the most pressured to put on the best act, pretending something important is going on by describing the flashiest wears of the solons and counting the numbers of applause to what is regularly a boring speech full of data twisting and outright lying on the state-of-the-nation; lies about government uplifting the poor and hungry, stimulating economic "growth," campaigns against corruption, ad nausea, all to divert from the latest, brazen police rubout and the crackle of "chi-chacha-ron" of pork and charter change for the benefit of foreign interests.

The true state of the nation can be summed up in the most scandalous news report of a Czech ambassador threatening to speak on a $ 30-million extortion try on the Czech company Inekon Trams on an MRT coaches supply deal. It dragged in Ballsy Aquino and hubby Eldon Cruz, as well as Cory Aquino DoTC secretary Pete Prado. After a week on the brink Malacañang with whatever backroom maneuvers got the Czech ambassador Josef Rychtar to salvage Ballsay, Eldon and First family's reputation by shifting blame to DoTC officials in general and throwing in an outright lie that "a government-to-government contracts do not allow commissions" while the world knows it is such deals that provide the largest under-the-table commissions.

There's a litany of crises that is hanging in the air crying out to be resolved, but all of which will be glossed over by BS Aquino III's Sona: hunger and joblessness grows, 20,000 OFWs in Taiwan in peril of losing jobs, two police rub-outs unresolved (Atimonan and Cavite), Philippine territories carved out by MILF, economic losses in the China stand-off, automation f—ked democracy, utility costs and taxes skyrocketing, ad infinitum.

Things have fallen apart more than we can imagine.

(Tune to 1098 AM, 5 to 6 p.m., Tuesday to Friday; Destiny Cable, Channel 8, Saturday 8 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m.: "OFWs await RP-Taiwan conciliation"; visit: http//www.newkatipunero.blogspot.com; text comments to 0923-4095739)