Burn baby burn
Such is the disdain with which the public regards the government, from elected officials to cabinet secretaries and their minions, that a fire can break out in a government building pertaining—rather suspiciously at that—to the same department embroiled in a multi-billion peso corruption scandal and everyone immediately smells a cover-up.
Coincidence or conspiracy? I can’t say I blame people for choosing to believe the worst of our public servants, for they have shown us who they truly are at their very worst: greedy, rapacious, and arrogant, not to mention dynastic, little power-trippers for whom government service is a get-rich-quick scheme for all the family.
Hey Harvard Business School, won’t this business model make a great case study?
Too convenient
It sounds all too convenient that the fire itself began in the Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) Bureau of Research and Standards, the section that conducts, of all things, research, studies, pilot testing, and formulation of policies for government infrastructure projects.
“We didn’t start the fire,” DPWH officials were quick to protest. The cause of the blaze, according to the initial investigation, was a computer unit that exploded, which is very much plausible. I mean, if we were to lather and shave away at this phenomenon with Occam’s Razor, we could possibly conclude that the simplest answer makes the most sense, that yes, an overheated computer is to blame.
But this is the Philippines, and even the good friar William of Ockham himself would find that logic in these parts often travels a circuitous path where anything is possible. It’s entirely possible, as far as Filipino logic is concerned, that a congressman implicated in the ghost projects scandal—who’s had to take another apartment unit for the sole purpose of housing not his family, not his staff, but cash in the billions, kickbacks from contractors with preferential status—might have ordered one of his trusted bagmen to burn that particular DPWH building down so that any evidence pointing to him is destroyed.
Business as (un)usual
For many Filipinos, our society has been so tainted by rampant corruption and a brazen lack of accountability at all levels of government, that the sudden occurrence of fire in the midst of ongoing obfuscations, theatrics, the never-ending zarzuela of allegations, resignations, retractions, with the accompanying array of props ranging from tears, wheelchairs, and neck braces, to vehement denials and proclamations of faith—in short, performative politics, or business as usual—can only be explained by another act of criminality.
In a country where the government can seem to comport itself as a syndicate, truth, logic, and decency become the first casualties. And ordinary citizens are, once again, callously ignored, or worse, condescendingly waved away.
I am reminded of Jivan, the doomed protagonist in the novel “A Burning” by Megha Majumdar, who unwittingly finds herself falsely accused and later convicted of a terrorist attack—a flaming torch tossed at a passenger train—because of a careless Facebook comment. A girl from the slums, she instinctively knows the system in India is rigged against people like her.
In the police van following her arrest, she observes a car speeding past, filled with carousing boys who had just come from the club.
“The doddering police van meant nothing to those boys. They did not slow down. They were not afraid. Their fathers knew police commissioners and members of the legislature, figures who were capable of making all problems disappear. And me, how would I get out of this? Whom did I know?”
During the trial, her erstwhile ally, turned witness for the prosecution, the gym teacher, PT Sir, is coerced into lying on the stand by the powerful party bosses.
“PT Sir wonders in a panic if he can get out of this. Is there a way? Maybe he can fake a heart attack.”
He is rewarded for his deceit: “It is true that there is a lot about life that the law misses. And it doesn’t hurt that each assignment comes with a ‘gift,’ delivered to him every month by an assistant, perhaps the assistant’s assistant, who drives to the house on a noisy motorcycle and offers a pristine white envelope.”
Light my fire
Yet fire, we mustn’t forget, is primal, elemental, and sacred. It is the stuff of life. Prometheus himself stole fire from the gods and brought it to humanity, and with it, knowledge and enlightenment.
There are fires that explode and combust, their flames engulfing one and all, scorching the earth, burning everything to a crisp, leaving nothing but ash, the detritus of neglect.
And there are fires whose embers never die, whose slow burn warms dormant passions, kindles hope, and breathes renewed purpose into our existence. This is the sacred fire that cleanses and purifies, that glows with defiance, blazes with resolve, and smolders in the hearts of true patriots.
So come on, baby, light my fire.
