The One with the Political Angst

I never thought I'd be one to post anything political but what the heck, some of my readers asked for it, so let's give it a go...

At the start of this year, we were shocked and horrified with the civil protests in Egypt. The people took to the streets, as then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was being accused of severe corruption. The Egyptian government's financial oversight body stated that the Mubarak, including his wife Suzanne, and his sons, Alaa and Gamal, have amassed billions of dollars' worth of properties, including luxury apartments and condominiums, palaces and even valuable farm land. This doesn't merely stretch along the Alexandria and Cairo, but traverses time zones - from the Red Sea luxury resort condos, to Beverly Hills Mansions, to properties in Paris, France. Apart from the extreme properties, the Mubarak family has acquired, over the years, companies which are worth millions of dollars. 

The Mubarak Family: (L-R) Alaa, Suzanne, Hosni and Gamal.
Picture Credit: Huffington Post 

To find out more about Hosni and the family, let's take a look at their history. Hosni took over the Egyptian government in 1981 when his predecessor, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated, following peace talks with Israel. Since the monarchy was overthrown, presidency was the next best thing and Hosni, in his first political address to his public in Cairo, promised "not to commit myself to what I can not implement, hide the truth from people, or be lenient with corruption and disorder...". 

(Far right) Hosni Mubarak in 1981. 

After assuming the post in 1981,supposedly, Hosni has rigged every election and has done everything in his power to push for elections every 6 years, but crushing political opponents and dissidents prior to the elections. 

Democratic rigging as demonstrated by Hosni in one of the allegedly rigged elections. 

During the 2005 Egyptian Presidential elections, no international observers were allowed in the Egyptian polls. 

Dr. Ayman Nour, a political opponent that tried to shed light on the widespread rigging of elections, was imprisoned  for forgery and was sentenced to 5 years of hard labor. 

January 25th, that fateful day, when people in Egypt bundled together to show their disgust and uprising against the corrupt and cheating Mubarak, was the day the world was introduced to a Muslim country fighting for its own rights. The massive outpouring of Egyptians in the streets of Cairo incited the world to take notice and for the world to become a spectator in a country desperate yet dedicated to reclaim its reputation and dignity as a nation. Following the uprising in Tunisia (which is a completely different story), Egypt's white and blue collar employees, students and random ordinary citizens pooled into the biggest uprising the Muslim country has ever seen. January 27th was the day that Egypt shut down the Internet - forcing people like Alyouka, the first Egyptian Twitter user to use the hash tag #Jan25 to alert others to protest. 

Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook were repeatedly blocked in Egypt for some time, ensuring that no other countries will be aware of what is going on in the country.

Protesters in the streets, carrying flags, drums, anything to show their revolt. 

What does this tell us? It tells us that in extreme oppression, people revolt. When things become too unpalatable and undesirable, it becomes the tipping point. In extreme cases, people don't only revolt, they fight and civil unrest ensues. A government will face its downfall when people find their means and they will, because they won't stop until they overthrow someone whom they know is not going to be good or right for them. 

This happens rarely in everyday life. People in the Philippines are way too weak to even question corruption. We tend to shrug and say, '...meh, karma will get them'. In the face of billion-peso scams, worthless pork barrel implementations and dare I say, smear campaigns. We're very good communicators - we form opinions and share them in taxi cabs, usual inuman sa kanto sessions and friendly dinners. We even, in our families, talk about politics. 

Surely, I'm not the only one that thinks that LPG-ran vehicles isn't bad for the public's health. It's been chronicled that LPG emits hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide and the poor cab drivers that drive those heinous converted vehicles are not benefiting from paying less for gas if they're going to pay for lung surgery medications after! Thanks to the former first gentleman Mike Arroyo for that! For more, I'm not the lone proponent of the thought that politicians should worry more about the health and safety of children in the Philippines rather than get caught up in a sex video scandal featuring a well-known erstwhile plastic surgeon come singer/actor and an up and coming starlet (And yes, Senator Bong, the word is perversion - not pervertedness or something to that effect, and sir, not pointing fingers, but you dare say, in front of congress, that Hayden Kho doesn't have morality and doesn't respect other women? You, sir, have a wife and Lord knows, 11 kids?! And you have allegedly slept with all your female co-stars. Am I on glue here?!). Then there's the RH Bill - don't even get me started on that one. In a church, near my office, there's a tarp saying "Stop the RH Bill, It's not God's will". I don't think God's will is to have 100,000 bastards at the end of each month because people had to avoid contraception. Further to that, let's face it, people are having sex! They are! In fact, my bet is someone half my age is doing it right now, with some dude she met at a bar, or a drinking session or whatnot.This young lady, with a condom or the pills, will avoid conception by almost 96% (I'm a pharmacist, BTW, so these stats make sense to me...) which means she may not conceive at all! The probability of her being preggers by the end of the bump-n-grind session is almost 96% as well. Given the right ovulation period, hormonal triggers,etc - I'm not gonna bore you with that - the point is, this girl would have to stop a year of her education to give birth, then expecting her to do the right thing, we expect her to land a job, a good career so she can provide for the resulting child. How can she do that if she's not equipped to face that responsibility? I'm freakin' 30, I can't imagine having a child yet! So what more if I was 15 and I got preggers? I'm with the whole movement that children are our future and perhaps the Catholic church has a right to impose upon its people the avoidance of contraception, but even the government is weighing in on it. You can be Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, either way, it's not your life that's at stake, it's that child's. And about children - if DSWD's programs were half as good, we won't be seeing rugby-sniffers around the metro, we won't see children prostituting themselves to foreign and local customers and yes, fathers won't be abusing their daughters or their sons, for that matter. If the government was ran as successfully as it can be, how come we're poor as a nation? Why are we illiterate as a nation? Why are out people generally thought of as domestic helpers in other countries? We clean for a living and we can't even clean our own society. 

The separation of the church and state rarely happens in the Philippines because politicians are worried about the amount of support they'll get from church leaders, or lack thereof, should they oppose.

Sometimes, I envy Egypt, because they took their flag and ran with it. They were unapologetic and they understood that they can reclaim their nation - they can reclaim the morality and the dignity that is the seat of civilization. With us, ask anyone in the street about the most moving news story they heard the past few days and that would probably be a showbiz news! It sucks that we've bred a society that fosters lack of awareness, but what stings more is that we ourselves breathe the society that fosters apathy. Bet a peso that this person you ask in the streets won't even know much of the history of the Philippines, how ancestors fought for our freedom and how we should be thankful for it. How long does the culture of apathy run and will this generation's legacy be that? You and I will have to decide. 

All Egypt and Mubarak pictures were taken from the Huffington Post. 

No photographers were harmed during the making of this post. All other pictures were taken from Stock Xchng.