Estrada's impeachment: A national embarrassment
Estrada's impeachment: A national embarrassment
By Isagani A. Cruz
MANILA: Let us turn our attention briefly from the garbage of the presidential misdeeds as alleged in the Articles of Impeachment to the incredible garbage piling up in the streets of Metro Manila. It's as scandalous as the many magnificent mansions of Erap and much more malodorous.
The lady who affronted our national pride was right. Claire Danes had reason to be revolted by the cockroaches and the rats. Perhaps we aren't as squeamish as she was because we have become accustomed to these ubiquitous vermin. But this doesn't excuse our tolerating them as if they were lovable household pets.
There's no denying the obvious. The whole metropolis is a sinkhole. Except for a few pockets of affluence in the plush subdivisions, Metro Manila is a veritable skid row that doesn't even bear traces of its glory days.
It does have its impressive high-rise buildings and elegant restaurants and air-conditioned malls, but they're like veneer covering a latent ugliness. Scratch the surface and what you see is decay and filth.
Look anywhere, and it's all you can do to keep from retching. The piles of uncollected trash are all around us. They're like the rats in Hamelin Town.
On the sidewalks, on empty lots, on street corners and even in the middle of the roads -- they're there to announce what a squalid people we are. Even the downtown areas have not been spared the degradation of mounting refuse. To take one sad example, the once-charming Avenida Rizal, in the very heart of Manila, is now one of its dirtiest streets.
The formerly bright thoroughfare has been blighted by the LRT. The buildings are dank and dingy; many of them should be torn down in the interest of public safety if not appearance. The sidewalks are cluttered with vendors, and possibly also pickpockets and other slatternly characters.
The first-class theaters with their marble lobbies have been reduced to obscure and unappealing holes in the wall. Everything had a jaded look, like an old beauty gone to pot.
And still speaking of streets, there are parts of Metro Manila that have been flooded for decades. The mud and the slime are already a way of life for the luckless people residing in those areas.
Elsewhere there are excavations and appropriated sidewalks and other illegal obstructions that give the entire metropolis the slovenly look of a community that has given up. And there are the inevitable slums with their makeshift hovels that have mushroomed all over the helpless metropolis.
The rivers and esteros have also been thoughtlessly defiled, mainly by the squatters. Where they once proudly proclaimed the beauty of nature and the neatness of the Filipino, they are now black with slush and covered by all manner of rotting rubbish.
President Estrada once personally directed the clean-up of one of these rivers, but the squalor is back to blacken the waters and infect the air. There seems to be a compulsion in some of our people to be deliberately untidy when it takes so little to be neat.
It's not only a matter of cleanliness but, more seriously, of sanitation and hygiene. The putrefying trash is a breeder of germs and disease that may affect the health and lives of the people.
The campaign to just bury the biodegradable trash can help a lot, but the rest of the trash must be collected and, hopefully, even recycled. There's no point in sorting the trash when it can only lie uncollected in the streets. Disposing of it at the proper time and place is no less imperative than impeaching President Estrada.
And as if the garbage and the flies were not enough, there's also the nuisance of the graffiti. We didn't have this aberration before but now they're all over the metropolis to mindlessly deface private and public property.
Graffiti of cause-oriented groups may have some civic motive although their method cannot be condoned. But what is wholly indefensible is the nonsensical scribblings of abnormal persons displaying their insanity.
The air pollution is also cause for serious concern. Once, from a tall building in San Juan, I looked for the Makati skyline but it was covered by smog. The drive against smoke belching has been succeeding so far but much more has to be done to cleanse the humid atmosphere.
New paint becomes soiled paint in a matter of weeks because of the dirty air. Street repairs have added to the dust and the soot caused by motor vehicles and factories. The time may come when we will have to wear oxygen masks and establish breathing stations to protect us from the heavy smog.
But far worse than the physical dirt is, by any standard, the moral dirt that has besmirched the whole of Metro Manila, especially the officialdom.
More than at any other time in our history, corruption has become the hallmark of the government, including Malacanang. The President himself is now on trial, principally on graft charges. The honesty of the rest of the government is also suspect, with the Congress and even the Supreme Court under public scrutiny.
Our recent humiliation before the international community over the Abu Sayyaf misadventures, coupled now with the current impeachment trial of our President, has discouraged many potential tourists from visiting our country. But the worse deterrent is the grime of the cities.
Tourism Secretary Gemma Cruz-Araneta cannot be blamed if her success has not been spectacular. The culprit is our people themselves who, by their own conduct, have projected to the world the image of a filthy nation.
A foreigner rash enough to visit our country may be less interested in the majestic Mayon Volcano with its perfect cone and the incredible rice terraces of the Igorots than in the mountains of trash that have become a symbol of Metro Manila. This is a national embarrassment that condemns the whole Filipino nation.
-- The Philippine Daily Inquirer/Asia News Network