the machinery of hope

cutting my teeth in the homeland with a childhood partially rooted in the marcos dictatorship, my adolescent years bore witness to the return of the pinoy oligarchs in the aquino and ramos years while my adulthood got hopelessly frustrated with unabashed rumors of graft and corruption of the estrada and macapagal-arroyo presidencies. philippine government has been a merry-go-round of political promises gone haywired. in high school, i truly enjoyed social studies (araling panlipunan) as a subject, granted that i went to a state school for my elementary and secondary education. i was oblivious to the schools of the rich in our city, places of learning managed and run by the catholic nuns, the laSalle brothers and the wealthy chinese. but my brand of education was competitive enough to prevail in any local or national university where the rules for good grades apply whether or not your family own the entire archipelago. but after finishing school, the rules suddenly changes, money and family connections come into the picture, it's a wee bit trickier finding the right job if your surname is not connected to a huge business conglomerate.

as i read the pages of echoes, (delivered to my grasp by the gorgeous ivy) a slender book of discerning observations of the filipino psyche, norms and value systems, i began to question my culture's third world mentality. within the diaspora, it's not that bad, despite proliferating in the comfort zones of gossips and karaoke sessions. but the adjuncts of poverty are rooted in the mainstream -- the changing of attitudes and mentalities, altering laws so that majority can benefit rather than the country's gilded few, like the eye-opener from my personal experience, e.g. the contractual grinds for stock shelvers and salespersons in department stores and supermarkets and the friendly wait staff in the food industry without philhealth and other benefits. it's obvious that giving the workers permanent jobs would incur severely on profit margins of the severely wealthy. but there should be a lawmaker bold enough to help out the improverished rather than cuddle the corporate pockets of the country 's commercial hierarchy. but through the years, no matter how much the truth torments us, we all know that the idea of a model pinoy politician is a pipe dream. still ever the optimist, i'm not losing hope with the future ingenuity of my people.