President should hold regular dialogues with the people

The Meet the Inquirer Multimedia Forum held on Sept. 8, 2015 was organized to give the public the rare opportunity to ask President Aquino relevant and important questions on matters of public interest.

Sadly, much of the little precious time allotted for the forum—merely 100 minutes—was wasted and squandered because the President was bombarded with silly, pabebe questions asked by some really stupid people.

How is the President’s love life even remotely a matter of national interest? This is the reason we have degenerated and deteriorated into the kind of vacuous, vapid, happy-go-lucky people we are—laughing out loud (LOL) even as we are already drowning in a sea of seemingly unsolvable problems having to do with our life and death as a nation and as a people; grinning and bearing it even when we are neck-deep in the guano of grave social, political and economic issues and concerns such as the rampant, unchecked and runaway thievery and corruption happening in all strata of government, political dynasties, the drug menace, the non-existent “peace and order” situation, and the traffic godzilla which has got all of us caught in the vise of its deadly stranglehold.

Still, it would be nice if this kind of interactive dialogue between the governor and the governed will in the future be institutionalized and made into a regular monthly or quarterly get-together of sorts, the kind that is reminiscent of the halcyon days when the gates and doors of Malacañang were a lot gentler and kinder, warmer and more open, and not as cold and forbidding as they are at present. Doors, gates, fences and walls that are built to keep out intruders and invaders just as well imprison the people they are meant to protect within a ghetto of their own making, rendering the growth of understanding and the development of lasting relationships among people all but impossible.

In the last year of his tenure, I hope the President will make himself more accessible to the public and more available to the people he vowed at the beginning of his term to serve and to protect. He must find time to hear what they have to say, even if these are the things he doesn’t get to hear on account of the Great Wall of Silence his minions had built to isolate and contain him. The cordon sanitaire that slithers this way and that like a boa constrictor all around the presidency is also a hangman’s noose with the lethal potential to strangle and kill at any one time, in both the figurative and the literal sense.

The people must not only be allowed to speak their minds; the President must also see to it that he is there to hear them tell it like it is to him. That is the essence of a truly inclusive, liberal and democratic government, one that is unequivocally of the people, by the people, for the people.

And this is what I would’ve wanted to tell the President during the forum had I been given the chance, and which I now deliver to him in the form of an open letter:

“Mr. President: One of your very first pronouncements as President was articulated in May 2010 when you said: ‘Poor quality textbooks have no place in our schools. I will not tolerate poor textbook quality in our schools. Textbooks will be judged by three criteria: Quality, better quality and more quality.’ And yet, the already atrociously bad textbook situation prevailing at that time when you assumed the presidency simply got worse. Last June 8, I publicly exposed by way of the Inquirer the 1,300 errors of the Grade 10 learner’s material used in public secondary schools. Lately, I discovered 400 errors in the Grade 4 textbook and 200 errors in the Grade 2 textbook, both of which are presently being used in all public elementary schools nationwide. When will the dumbing down of Filipino schoolchildren stop? Children are not playthings and the classroom is not a playhouse. The writing of textbooks is not child’s play. Is the quality textbook really such an impossible dream? When shall we awaken from the sick and sickening ‘daymare’ and bad dream that is the error-ridden sick book? Before you go, Sir, please do something about the very poor quality of our public school textbooks. Let it be a shining legacy of the second Aquino administration, something for which you will be remembered with lasting gratitude and affection.”

Antonio Calipjo Go ([email protected]) is the academic supervisor of Marian School of Quezon City.