Playful with task of governance

The legislators seem to be just playing games with their avowed and hallowed duty and role in governing the country. It looks like for most of them it’s just all political hoopla most of the time—and a “numbers game.”

Ferdinand Marcos and other presidents after him used to have “the numbers” in the political Tower of Babel they erected for themselves, numbers big enough to debauch righteousness and decisively make the nation the biggest loser in the end.  The same game soulless politicians continue to play over and over again, in effect impeding the country’s evolution from the dark ages. If this is democracy, I don’t want it.

When will our politicians abdicate their backward ways and practices?

The number of the devil is 666.  The one which, in politics, they call “the numbers” may not be identical with that of the beast’s, but “numbers” can easily make a false god out of a politician or politicians “in charge” of government. Before long, they arrogate unto themselves the power to do whatever they deem is “necessary” for the nation but, more likely, for themselves—more specifically, to promote their personal interst—right or wrong.

(Was it not the popular outcry “crucify Him” that condemned Jesus to death?)

This is why “politics” and politicians, I believe, are themselves anathema to “good life” and national progress, the reason being that their motivations and actions seem to be mostly self-serving, the exact opposite of what public service truly means. They so enjoy the “game” until they get drunk and drown in their own dregs. So they normally achieve progress only for themselves.

Public service is not a slot machine where public officials may playfully place “bets” according to the “odds” they see best at the moment from their politically convenient view. The one and only stake that should be in their every agenda should be the life of every Filipino citizen, and that should be where they should mainly bet on always.

Nobody deserves to die. Christ gave up His own life that we may all live and that the sinners in us may get a chance at a new life and at salvation.

“He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”  (Micah 6:8, King James Version)

RENI M. VALENZUELA, [email protected]