By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:03:00 08/05/2008
There were a couple of stories here last Saturday that drove home the point that those who can’t do preach. The first was Bayani Fernando warning the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) against touching his posters. “Unlike other billboards, they don’t pose danger to lives and property. They’re part of an intensified information and educational campaign of the MMDA to instill discipline among residents and restore order in the metropolis.” The DPWH, he said, should tear down instead the commercial billboards that flout the law.
What idiocy. The DPWH shouldn’t just touch his posters, they should touch him, preferable by mixing him in cement, and even more preferably not just metaphorically. More than the commercial ads, his posters are a threat to life and property, inviting as they do drivers to ram their vehicles into the offending posters. They are also a threat to health, his picture, like that of his boss, being enough to crowd hospitals with patients suddenly afflicted by hypertension and other diseases related to feelings of unbearable oppression.
At the very least, those posters subvert their professed intention. Discipline is the last thing they will encourage among the public—rioting is first. How can you instill discipline among the public when you yourself display cheekiness and irresponsibility beyond belief? Those posters were already an eyesore last year when Metro Manila residents could count whatever blessings in life they still had. They are an absolute abomination today when those same residents are reeling from the prices of rice and gas, the two most basic needs of an urban resident, that are rising faster than their leaders are falling. The fortune that went to making those posters could have been put to better use.
While at that, the fortune was harnessed only to fuel Fernando’s political ambitions. They are campaign posters, nothing more, nothing less. You know it, I know it, he knows it. The only comfort, a truly cold one, anyone may take from those posters is that they show the future voters exactly what would happen if they ever felt suicidal enough to put him in higher office. That is what he will do to their taxes.
I do know something that will assuredly instill discipline among the public. That is to throw Fernando in jail for a few years for illegal use of funds and campaigning well before the stipulated period. At the very least it would instill discipline in him. At the very most it would instill discipline in the rest of us by showing that lack of discipline, or plain abuse, won’t be tolerated in this country. It will be poetic justice as well: Finally Fernando will get a taste of what he has been giving undisciplined pedestrians to force them to keep to sidewalks. That is to fence him in.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:03:00 08/05/2008
There were a couple of stories here last Saturday that drove home the point that those who can’t do preach. The first was Bayani Fernando warning the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) against touching his posters. “Unlike other billboards, they don’t pose danger to lives and property. They’re part of an intensified information and educational campaign of the MMDA to instill discipline among residents and restore order in the metropolis.” The DPWH, he said, should tear down instead the commercial billboards that flout the law.
What idiocy. The DPWH shouldn’t just touch his posters, they should touch him, preferable by mixing him in cement, and even more preferably not just metaphorically. More than the commercial ads, his posters are a threat to life and property, inviting as they do drivers to ram their vehicles into the offending posters. They are also a threat to health, his picture, like that of his boss, being enough to crowd hospitals with patients suddenly afflicted by hypertension and other diseases related to feelings of unbearable oppression.
At the very least, those posters subvert their professed intention. Discipline is the last thing they will encourage among the public—rioting is first. How can you instill discipline among the public when you yourself display cheekiness and irresponsibility beyond belief? Those posters were already an eyesore last year when Metro Manila residents could count whatever blessings in life they still had. They are an absolute abomination today when those same residents are reeling from the prices of rice and gas, the two most basic needs of an urban resident, that are rising faster than their leaders are falling. The fortune that went to making those posters could have been put to better use.
While at that, the fortune was harnessed only to fuel Fernando’s political ambitions. They are campaign posters, nothing more, nothing less. You know it, I know it, he knows it. The only comfort, a truly cold one, anyone may take from those posters is that they show the future voters exactly what would happen if they ever felt suicidal enough to put him in higher office. That is what he will do to their taxes.
I do know something that will assuredly instill discipline among the public. That is to throw Fernando in jail for a few years for illegal use of funds and campaigning well before the stipulated period. At the very least it would instill discipline in him. At the very most it would instill discipline in the rest of us by showing that lack of discipline, or plain abuse, won’t be tolerated in this country. It will be poetic justice as well: Finally Fernando will get a taste of what he has been giving undisciplined pedestrians to force them to keep to sidewalks. That is to fence him in.