Banning riding tandem: silly, shameful gov’t excuse

“Riding in tandem” has become a media catchphrase to signify driving a motorcycle with a pillion rider who executes snatching, shooting or various other criminal swipes. The ease with which the driver can weave through any traffic gridlock to get away with the crime has made it the preferred modus operandi. As a standard measure to ensure anonymity and impunity, criminals use stolen motorcycles or spurious plates.

To address this ever-growing menace to society, the city of Manila wants to blaze the trail toward totally outlawing and penalizing the mere fact of two persons riding tandem on a motorcycle, regardless of their intentions. At once, we see red flags flying over such course of action.

First of all, it is indefensibly discriminatory and downright silly. It presumes malice and criminal intent on the part of all motorcycle-riding people even where there is absolutely none. For all we know, the motorcycle may be the only means of private transportation they can afford. Ergo, such a restriction can arguably be denounced as antipoor! And coming from Erap (Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada), that is eximiously rich in irony!

Secondly, it is really a shameful excuse for the government’s miserable failure to provide public service and security in return for all the taxes people pay for services, foremost of which is the enforcement of law and order in our streets.

There is no question that honest-to-goodness police visibility in as many parts of the land as possible is a proven deterrent to criminality. Alas, any argument along that line always brings us back to square one: lack of funds.  Undermanned and ill-equipped, our law enforcement agencies are really on a sticky wicket. What to do? Raise funds via more taxes?  But are not the citizens being taxed enough already?

When we think of the billions of pesos to which government bureaucrats have been shamelessly helping themselves by way of periodic “bonuses,” we can only shake our heads in unspeakable disgust. Their “service” having remained as deplorable as ever, how dare they even thought of rewarding themselves for their pathetic “performance”! If the long lines at their offices daily are any indication, they deserve to be hanged instead for their egregious incompetence. Those wastages of public funds could have been put to much better use by way of recruiting more law enforcers or acquiring technological capabilities to protect citizens and restore sanity in the land.

—STEPHEN L. MONSANTO,

Monsanto Law Office,

Loyola Heights, Quezon City,

[email protected]