Unfinished business

Yesterday’s (Thursday)  front-page headline, “Stray bullet kills baby,” gave me a sense of déjà vu. I found the Jan. 2, 2013 front page of the Inquirer on the Internet and it read “Hunt for Marcos loot to end,” followed by a smaller headline, “Ranjilo dead, Nicole fights for life.”

Ranjilo Nemer, 4, and Stephanie Nicole Ella, 7, were victims of stray bullets from the New Year’s Eve revelry. Ranjilo, who is from Mandaluyong, was dead on arrival at the hospital while Nicole, from Tala in Quezon City, lived only a few days more.

This year’s headline referred to an infant, Von Alexander Llagas, shot dead in Caoayan, Ilocos Sur.

But there was still another sense of déjà vu that came reading yesterday’s Inquirer. Buried inside on page A6 was a story, “Hostage drama carnage shocks town.”  The place was Pili, Camarines Sur, and the drama involved a certain Anthony Zepeda shooting dead his father, his brother, sister-in-law and a household helper, and then turning the gun on himself after a 10-hour standoff. The nightmare did not end for the town of Pili. When the police went in to pick up the dead, a live grenade left behind by Zepeda went off, injuring another four people.

Still in yesterday’s Inquirer, on page A15 was a report about a retired soldier, name not given, shooting to death three men who had been sent to cut off his water bill.

Those two stories got me back into the Internet, to the Jan. 5, 2013 front page of the Inquirer, with the headline “My ‘ninong’ shot me.” The previous day, Ronald Bae went on a shooting rampage in Kawit, Cavite, assisted by a John Paul Lopez who was seen by Bae’s side, handing ammunition to the killer. Eight died and another 12 were injured before Bae was shot down by the police. One of those injured was Bae’s godson. Among the dead was that godson’s elder sister.

It later emerged that Bae had serious anger management problems, beating his wife and threatening people. One news report said the police found the skeletal remains of one individual in Bae’s backyard, someone he had quarreled with over fighting cocks.

For a few days the newspapers—and Internet blogs—decried the lack of gun control measures in the country with references to an October 2012 report from the Philippine National Police that admitted there were some 610,000 firearms licenses that had expired.

The last news report referring to Bae and Lopez was in March 2013. Silence since then. Nicole’s and Ranjilo’s killers have never been identified.

‘Ningas cogon’

2013 could easily be the year of “ningas cogon.” The term refers to the brush fires (ningas) of dried cogon grass that flare up and rage for a few hours, then die out. As a metaphor, it refers to the tendency to start a project with great enthusiasm, only to abandon it before it is completed.

It is not clear how the term ningas cogon came about. One theory is that during the Spanish colonial period, Filipinos protested forced labor by slowing down with their work and eventually leaving the project unfinished. Another possibility, also associated with the colonial period but which could apply to the present as well, is that it came about because people often felt disempowered or hampered—by poverty or authoritarian and inept leaders—from ever finishing projects.

Today, I wonder if the information technology revolution may have, paradoxically, reinforced  ningas  cogon  because we have become addicted to burning news. We live on the latest news, responding as a herd in shock, awe, elation, sadness, anger. We sometimes act on the news, calling for changes in public policy, and then with the next burning headline, move on to the next flavor of the day.

I did read of plans to introduce stricter gun control laws this year, but to see is to believe. It doesn’t help knowing that President Aquino loves guns, and recently tried to defuse tensions between Manny Pacquiao and Kim Henares by getting them to shoot it out, literally but at a firing range, rather than at each other.

‘2014 To Dos’

Our national life seems now to be marked by one  ningas  cogon  after another, and we’ll be fortunate if the unfinished business ever gets picked up again. Here’s my list of “2014 To Dos,” the most important unfinished agendas from 2013, besides gun control:

First, Metro Manila traffic gridlocks. Remember the typhoon in July which resulted in Metro Manila-wide traffic gridlock? No less than President Aquino called for an investigation, and there were promises, and more promises, to work on the problem. Fortunately or unfortunately, subsequent strong typhoons struck outside Metro Manila, so people seemed content, even happy with the usual traffic congestion.  But the risks of another major gridlock remain, and I shudder to think of what they will involve when they do happen.

Second,  the LRT and MRT ordeals.  On a daily basis, thousands of commuters have to live with mass transit (dis)services. The system is just overloaded, made worse by poor maintenance. People will complain only when a train breaks down and stalls the entire system, but revert back to a live-and-let-live attitude shortly thereafter. There was one major change.org online petition asking the President to require government officials to take the LRT and MRT at least once a month so they could see what the public has to endure. Nothing else is happening, and I remember listening to Transportation Secretary Joseph Abaya saying last year, in a radio interview, that they had ordered new trains but these were not likely to be in place until, hold your breath, 2015.  That sounded really dreadful in 2013. Now, in 2014, we can say, oh well, next year isn’t too far off.

Fourth,  pork. Furious we were, every Filipino feeling very Miriam Defensor-Santiago with Janet Napoles and her billions.  Abolish pork, street and online protesters demanded. Then the Supreme Court ruled the Priority Development Assistance Fund to be unconstitutional. Weeks after that decision, it remains unclear just what else was in the Supreme Court decision, with Supertyphoon “Yolanda” distracting the nation from the pork issue. Some legal analysts point out that the winner in this Supreme Court decision is the President, who now wields more power over funds, including a presidential kitty which of course we won’t call pork.

And finally, all those natural disasters, which insurance companies call acts of God. Supertyphoons and one earthquake, each stirring the public. The headlines change, CNN teams leave, local governments squabble with each other or with the national government.  And we all wait for the next headline of a disaster.

More than resurrecting media coverage, isn’t it time as well to use a more scientific approach, investigating just what is involved in each of these disasters before we propose solutions? For gun control to be effective, we need to understand who were Bae and Zepeda, and what’s the link between mental illness and the rampages. Similar scientific  investigations are needed for our traffic problems and disaster management.

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E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph