In a state of disaster and political turmoil, we seek to have the one we love right at our sight. To feel their warmth and care. More so, we hope that these dark times would shed light of why we chose that person in the first place. We would be looking for our beloved, our querida.
From the start of November, the Philippines just showed how spooky things can be. Typhoon after typhoon, we saw disaster. Floating bodies everywhere. People died. Families lost members. The working class lost houses that they have saved on for decades.
Question, where was our president? Where was he when we wanted the popular strongman that people thought was the representation of the poor and the oppressed?
Isn’t this supposed to look like the picturesque romantic scene when the knight and shining armor rides his horse and saves the lady in dress? In the time of Inang Bayan’s distress, where is the prince that we expected?
Or perhaps he is but the prince that Niccolo Machiavelli portrayed in his belief of the Divine Right of Kings? Is not that but an irony to the responsive leader that we elected?
In numbers, from COVID-19 alone, the country has already recorded 7,791 fatalities. In terms of hunger, the Social Weathering Station has stated that one in five Filipinos are experiencing hunger. Look around your vicinity, to think that one in every five individual you meet is not eating well. Where are the funds that were supposed to be distributed given the emergency powers stipulated in Bayanihan II?
Another reality. Look at the human capital that the state has forced to go to school even without prepared facilities and technology. Where was the Department of Education and Commission on Higher Education that claimed that the start of the school year will come with a reiterative enforcement? Are they still listening?
In the pursuit of economic stability, have we undermined the suffering of these people we told to become resilient? Jean Jacque Rousseau once said, “We have physicists, geometricians, chemists, astronomers, poets, musicians, and painters in plenty; but we have no longer a citizen among us.”
Have we become devoid of human emotion during a catastrophic time?
Now back to our beloved president. Is he still the beloved president, the querida. Or is he just but the querida2 that the Philippines have portrayed as the mistress? Is he just but a detour in Inang Bayan’s pursuit of liberation and security?
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