Battered

We have become a battered and traumatized people. Notice how frantic we become when a storm threatens. Every precaution is taken. Work and school are suspended. We buckle down and expect the worst.

- ALEX MAGNO

We are among the most disaster-prone countries in the world.

But until lately, we have confronted calamity with a certain elan. We cultivated a certain confidence that we would always pull together and surmount the challenges we are fated to endure.

Some of that elan has dissipated. We have lost confidence in our public infrastructure. We fear that, because of corruption, our bridges would fall, our dams would break and our hospitals would collapse.

When a major quake struck northern Cebu a few days ago, patients were evacuated from the only hospital in Bogo City. People were reluctant to return to the facility even after engineers declared the hospital safe. They did not trust government engineers.

For days, people subsisted under plastic trash bags to keep out the rain, refusing the safety of evacuation centers. There is such distrust for edifices built under government contracts.

At the slightest rainfall, our streets flood. There is enough evidence that the ill-conceived flood control projects did not just fail to solve the problem. They aggravated the flooding. Many of these projects after all were intended simply to facilitate looting.

We have been betrayed by the political class. This fact taxes our pride in our nationhood.

Our government has failed us on every front. Our educational system was allowed to rot, leaving the next generation ill-equipped to thrive in the world ahead. Our public health system is barely there. Our agriculture is unable to feed our people. Our economy is unable to keep our people meaningfully employed.