Maintaining hope on Philippines

Lourdes Didith V. Mendoza, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Asia News Network,Manila

I came across several poems written by Nelly Sachs, a Nobel Prize winning poet who wrote much about the Holocaust. Nelly Sachs lost the man she loved during the Nazi period, and narrowly escaped certain death through the help of a friend who enabled her to emigrate from Germany to Switzerland. She was a poet of both witness and hope because after witnessing and experiencing the atrocities of the Holocaust, she came out in the open and bared all her sufferings and saw that through the misery, hope is not too far away.

Hope was so far out of sight for the people caught in the grip of the Nazi reign, but Sachs saw it. Her poems carried a faith in her heart.

Today in our country, we may not be experiencing the same kind of terror and sorrow. Here in the Philippines, we are in the height of comedy. What is happening in our local stage is ridiculously funny and outrageous. What is happening is horrifyingly laughable.

A few weeks ago political mudslinging reached an all-time low. An accusation of rape hurled at a male politician, a presidential candidate stopping in mid-speech to rile a journalist at work, suspicions of business compromise, a comedian forced to keep mum because of his political leaning, shady deals -- these were the stuff politics was made of the past few weeks.

These were the stuff that made us laugh so hard we ended up crying. And through all this slapstick fun, we guffawed at the right moments, as each scene unfolded on our television sets. But after the show, most of us stopped laughing because the truth slowly sunk in. What we witnessed over and over again wasn't a show. It was the reality of our lives -- we have become a laughingstock.

With an atmosphere of nervous despair pervading Election Day, people were wringing their hands in panic after clapping their hands numb in appreciation of the funny antics of our politicians. What now? Where do we go after the show? What do we do?

The problem with most of us is that we seem to forget that what we witness on the political stage is just a show. When the credits roll in, and the last round of clapping fades away, we need to go out and face the real world. We need to go out and work. We need to go out and face real people and do real jobs. We need to face reality.

The reality is we are a poor country that has been in the grip of elitist democracy for almost a century. The reality is that our population is growing, urbanization is changing our nation's landscape, our educational system is deteriorating. Filipinos are becoming poorer and many are leaving for distant lands. The reality is not funny. It's too hard to bear sometimes, but bear it we must, with hope.

By comparison, Nelly Sachs' reality during the Nazi years was far crueler, far more difficult than the reality we must face today. But she faced it, and she encouraged her fellow Jews by bringing them hope through her poems. There is no reason for us to feel hopeless and cynical because what we experience today is not imminent, horrifying death like what Nelly Sachs witnessed. It is death, nonetheless, albeit slow. But we still have time to ward it, and we still have the strength to fight it.

How can the fighting begin then? First, we need to unglue ourselves from the privileged seats that give us a fantastic view of the antics of our politicians. We need to turn our eyes and ears away from them because they give us nothing good to see and hear anyway. We need to look away and look at where real work and real progress happen.

Where can we find real work and real progress that can change the harsh reality we experience today? Look around you, look at the faces of your fellow Filipinos who are working themselves to the bone to feed their families. Look at your community and see what projects are being implemented that benefit your immediate environment.

Look at your local governments and see how they are working for you, if they are. Look at the local NGOs and civil society groups near you and see what they are trying to do to improve our nation's lot. Look at your church and see how it strives to sustain your faith even if it is itself under attack sometimes. That's where hope is.

There are a number of concrete projects under our noses that escape our vision simply because we are busy being amused by our national politicians. What we should do now is simply laugh at these politicians and turn away from them. We should look at the real people around us who continue to hope in our country, despite the blunders our politicians are making.

We must not wait passively for the tragedy -- in our case, tragicomedy -- to end. We must do something so it will end.