The blame game

I am a kid who is wrapped up in typical teenager things, and as such, I am not fond of keeping with the trends in politics. To be frank, I see politics as not a race or competition, as most people do, but as a downward spiral that leads to nothing but graft, corruption, and our favorite, controversy. At least, that’s what it looks like in the Philippines. But recently, it has been sparking my interest.

The tidal wave of hatred for President Aquino has been alarming me lately. I got home from school a few days ago to the news that several groups have moved for his impeachment. This piece of news surprised me, to say the least. What did he do wrong this time?

To those groups, apparently, absolutely everything—from his bachelor status to his smoking habit to the Priority Development Assistance Fund to the Disbursement Acceleration Program, to even natural calamities—can get P-Noy impeached.

In my opinion, people are getting desperate. With everything that has happened in the recent past—the pork barrel scam, “Yolanda,” “Glenda”—we are starting to fear for the future of our country. We are scared. We need a way out. How do we do this? How do we escape? We look for people to blame.

Sadly, we blame the wrong ones.

Take Yolanda and Glenda. When these typhoons hit the country, they hit hard, taking thousands of lives. What did people do about this? They sat, cried, and blamed the government. How on earth is the government at fault for this? These were natural disasters! These couldn’t be controlled!

Is it the government’s fault because it didn’t send help fast enough? Is it the government’s fault because we weren’t told to prepare for the typhoons? The Philippines is in the Pacific Ring of Fire. It lies right next to the ocean. Of course it’s a natural target for calamity. Educated or not, you should have noticed that every year typhoons sail into the country and destroy everything in their path. Should we cry about this? Do something! Prepare emergency kits, make sure your house is stable, do whatever you can, but don’t blame people who couldn’t do anything about it when you didn’t prepare for it in the first place.

Next is the topic of politics. Let me return to my point here: the overwhelming hatred for the President. People seem to find new ways to bring him down every day: immature walkouts, spreading lies and rumors, unjust accusations. Are you people so desperate that you have sunk to the level of bringing down a man who has done nothing but what he could for the country? Are you telling me that it’s okay to judge a person because he is still single at more than 50 years of age? Are you telling me it’s not despicably childish to walk out of the President’s State of the Nation Address to dramatize your protests?

I’m not saying you can’t do that; you have your own freedom of expression. But so do I, and I’m taking the liberty to express myself right now. If your pride and ignorance have reduced you to shaming other people just to make you feel good about yourself, like you have control over the life you are living, then that is not a life at all. Oh, and by the way, I really hope you didn’t use those government funds you were complaining about to finance your travel and extravagant attires.

For the first time in a long time, here we have a president who is willing to set things right, put us on the daang matuwid. I’m not saying that just because his parents were remarkable people, he is one, too. He has earned his title as one of those remarkable people. Don’t believe me? Check our economic growth since the start of his term.

What ails me here is how people have reacted to the problems that our country is facing. Are we doing anything about them? Yes. Are we doing the right thing? Absolutely not. We shouldn’t be blaming our leaders for things we don’t understand and cannot control. Yes, I am young. I am naive. I can’t even begin to pretend to know everything. But I do know this: If this is the road our country is heading down, the end doesn’t look pretty at all. Maybe it’s time to turn back and look for that daang matuwid that P-Noy is talking about.

Ma. Francesca Santiago, 13, is an eighth-grade student of the University of St. La Salle-Integrated School, Bacolod City.