Securing the ‘already secured’

Early this month, we were all audiences of a viral social media post—the stoppage of traffic along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City. It turned out that a policeman assigned there initiated the closure of traffic to allow a “very important person” to pass through the busy highway, along with a convoy, presumably providing maximum security to whoever that unidentified VIP was.

It did not take long for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) to issue an official statement vehemently denying that it was VP Sara Duterte on board the highly secured vehicle provided with the courtesy of a traffic-free passage along that busy highway at a time when commuters were waiting for public transport to bring them to their places of work.

The poor traffic policeman, who earlier thought it was the “vice president as the reason for the road closure” is now in trouble, relieved from his post, and possibly subjected to further investigation over this “lapse of judgment.” The OVP statement claimed: “VP Sara has no engagement in that particular area at that time.” He has now become a scapegoat for an act of indiscretion and utter sense of entitlement of a government official who had to stop traffic so they could pass through.

Within that crucial week when the viral video was shown, pictures of both the VP and former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo meeting with Iglesia ni Cristo executive minister Eduardo V. Manalo were also posted on social media. This raised several speculations of an early “political caucus” in preparation for the midterm elections in 2025 or perhaps strategically for the national elections in 2028.

Despite the denials, there are still lingering doubts on the veracity of the OVP claim, and those who have raised these doubts recall one key statement that the current VP, as a candidate then, claimed that there are “no honest politicians” and honesty is not important in becoming one.

Who is now telling the truth? Perhaps this is of no importance now that the issue has slowly died down in both social and mainstream media.

But whoever it was that accessed such entitlement of traffic-free passage on a highway crucial to the livelihoods of thousands of Filipinos just displayed his or her arrogant, imperious behavior.

This was also a clear demonstration of how people in higher echelons of government bureaucracy behave as if their positions are served to them on silver platters. They forget they are there because all the hardworking, tax-paying Filipinos have contributed to national revenues that are the sources of their salaries, perks, and other privileges. They are in their positions of privilege and power because hardworking taxpayers voted for them.

And this is the reality both at the national and regional, even at the local, levels of government.

Some years back, at the height of the immense political grip of the grand old man, the late Datu Andal Ampatuan, on the then undivided Maguindanao province, localities under his stronghold were always in fear of being in the path of his convoy as his party traversed the provincial highways. As some members of these communities said to me then, “his (the Datu’s) security is a source of insecurity for us. We know that he is protecting himself from his political foes and this might trigger a possible firefight.” This was an expression of how the security of the already secured, in terms of their daily sustenance and overall comfort in their lives, becomes a source of insecurity for the impoverished and already insecure sectors of the local population.

In other parts of the world, government officials go about their daily activities without any fanfare, no “wang-wang” to stop traffic. They even drive their own vehicles to work.

Here in the Philippines, especially in conflict-prone areas in the Bangsamoro region, even barangay chairpersons travel with no less than two carloads of bodyguards bearing long firearms. We are already seeing these images in the barangays that will soon be voting for their next set of “entitled” officials.

All these are manifestations of a high sense of entitlement to privilege, although their current positions were made possible by the votes from the majority of the electorate. They forgot their campaign promises of being servants of the people, and instead have become the people’s imperious masters who manifest this through their access to “privileged” security measures, like the closure of highway traffic.

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