Our great calamity: Leaders of mediocre quality

FILIPINOS can only rage in frustration as our national leaders continue to focus their attention on how to bury the political career of Vice President Sara Duterte and how to evade their collective and individual accountability on their systematic trillion-pesos theft of the people’s money thru their bogus flood control projects.

All of these are happening in the background of the ongoing war in the Middle East when the criminal tandem of American Imperialism and Zionist Israel treacherously attack the Islamic Republic of Iran last February 28 that put the entire region in conflagration—and the global economy, more so the Philippines, in a state of uncertainty.

The ongoing war in the Middle East did not happen in a vacuum. Nor did it come as a surprise to anyone. The “Iran-Is-Next” project has long been in the drawing board of US Imperialism and Israel dating back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution that booted out Uncle Sam in Iran.

Yet, when the bombs start falling on February 28, our state of unpreparedness on how best to adapt to the situation and how to effectively address the many serious problems that it brought out are clear for anyone to see:

There simply was no “plan” and everything now hinges on improvisation.

There was no plan in this time of great uncertainty because all our officials can attend to is how to sideline the Number One threat to their plunder of the people’s money despite the elections still two years away– so they can continue with their “merry (crooked) ways.”

Their callousness can only be described as bordering on the criminal considering that our leaders are also aware of our vulnerabilities as a nation—no strategic oil reserves, a near bankrupt economy made worse by their greed, the shackles of foreign and domestic debt, our national sovereignty we have long surrendered to the caprice of American Imperialism and a foreign exchange reserve heavily subsidized by the remittances of our overseas workers– whose very lives are now under serious threat from the bombs of the warring nations and factions in the Middle East.

It is to the great calamity of our nation that our governments, past and present, have always been run by leaders of mediocre quality.

And always, their “love of country” is compromised by their greater love of money and power.

All of them, of course, are “highly educated” but education, clearly, goes beyond the ability to read, write and count. It also entails the knowledge and the fortitude to see beyond the horizon, prepare for any contingency and to do what is necessary for the greater good of the greatest number.

But heck, for the purpose of exploitation, such limitations should be enough, right?

Still, we remain optimistic that Filipinos take lessons from the harsh and bitter reality of their present lives. After all, they can only bear so much suffering.

The day will come when they can no longer be fooled by flowery words and promises of their leaders. The day will come when they can easily discern facts from lies, the chaff from the grain.

Soon, they will demand action, and if the authorities do nothing, they will take matters into their own hands.

That would be the day, indeed.