A matter of inconvenience

Last saturday, my driver came to work sobbing.

My maids were running around the house like chickens without a head. They announced to the household that my driver had been robbed - again!

My driver goes home to Batangas because that's where his family is. He earns more than the average family driver (yes, I pay extremely well). In spite of his better earnings, he actually spends 60% of his pay just on transportation. After explaining (I think the right word is "castigating") to him the stupid economics he practices, he decided to reside in Bicutan with his brother (which is a 15 minute jeepney ride to my residence) eventually. It's either that or I told him that he can find another job somewhere. There are days when he goes home to his mother's house in Makati. That's another story.

My driver commutes by public transportation from Alabang to any other destination home - Batangas, Bicutan or Makati. Last March, on his way home from Alabang, he was robbed. Someone slashed the back pocket of his pants and took his cellphone and wallet in the train. I don't think they took much, but he lost his ID, driver's license and of course his cellphone.

He needed to borrow money to replace all these and the hapless employer (that's me) had to lend him money. Of course, since it was a debt, he needed to repay these over the next few months with minor deductions in his paycheck. Which meant that his take home pay would be a bit less and that his family would need to scrimp.

Fast forward to Saturday. So my driver came in that fateful Saturday morning after coming from Makati. His story - while waiting at the bus stop, a couple had approached him to ask for directions going to God-knows-where. He found it strange that the couple had boarded the bus with him and even sat beside him! (Mind you, my driver is not even good looking nor does he dress well at all. If there's an award for dressing down to the pauper - my driver would win hands down.) It was a longer trip from Makati to Alabang. And he fell asleep. When he woke up in the Alabang station, the couple wasn't beside him anymore and when he alighted, he noticed that his cellphone and wallet had disappeared as well.

It was take two for my poor driver. I don't think the thieves really took a lot because he had no money in the wallet except for his driver's license and the old mobile phone was one of my old recyclable unreliable phones.

I blog about this because of the inconvenience and hassle that it brings to ordinary people, living ordinary lives, trying to make a decent living through ordinary means. I am flabbergasted at the many cries of human rights activists who decry that when policemen catch criminal in the act of a crime and beat them up, it's a human right violation! These mendicants and scums of the earth have the temerity to prey not only on the rich, but most despicably on the poor. These robbers who have nothing better to do with their lives and are too lazy to even get a decent job profligate their trade by perfecting their technique at robbing people of their hard earned money. And they have the guile to cry out human rights violation? DUH?!?!!?

I have been robbed several times as well. It's not a good feeling to lose hard earned cash or kind to thieves. It's a feeling of anger, desperation and helplessness. Even if you go and report it to the police, I have serious doubts that they will even help you solve the crime. The cops in the Philippines will simply make a police report, give you a copy, shake your hand and tell you to go file an affidavit of loss. Seriously, I have never even heard of someone going to the cops, reporting a robbery, and a cop following it up or at best, even solving it. It's why these thieves just go on a robbing spree. There's no solution to the crime. It's why people think that the cops are bad. There seems to be collusion to each crime.

It's like an everyday thing in Manila! It's like a run-of-the-mill scenario where kids high on rugby roam the roads, where mendicants tap at your car window begging for scraps or scrape your car, where the traffic enforcer is busier texting in the middle of traffic and running after number coded cars rather than enforcing traffic rules and regulations on the road, where the normal Pinoy will need to piss against any wall because he needs to take a leak, where jeepneys, trikes and buses load and unload in any part of the street they want, because they want to. It's like civil disobedience is a matter of every day life. There are government agencies that are mandated to implement the rule of law. Never mind if the public know that they enrich themselves because they steal, but puhhleeze do something good in return, at the very least. It's despicable enough that they steal from the coffers of tax collection and spend like there's no tomorrow our hard-earned taxes but to turn a blind eye to their job description and even to what they should or should not be doing is a bitch!

And so, the story goes that not only was my driver inconvenienced, but I and his family too. I had to, of course, lend him money to get all these lost documents, again! The police report and the notary public had served no purpose. You needed to enrich the PNP by paying for a police report and then the inutile lawyers who do nothing but issue a notarized affidavit of loss, and so in the end it's these idiots who sit back and do nothing that actual gain from the robbery! Sanamagan this country. It's so third world, so Banana Republic, so idiotically run by amateurs, so politically corrupt.

It also meant that my driver's family will be inconvenienced as well. They will need to buy less rice for this week. The kids will need to walk going to school again. The wife will need to scrimp on a can of milk for the young one. And I will be Santa Claus even before Christmas, again!

The rage that spits from my guts cannot be measured in this blog article. There needs to be some change in the way we look at crime and punishment in the Philippines. Just slapping the culprits on the wrist for the inconvenience caused is not enough. Let the human rights bleeding hearts cry out for all I care. If I were the president, I'd make sure that once these thieves got caught, they'd get their hand amputated in public on a Sunday morning with free admission to all. Drug dealers would get shot by firing squad on a Monday morning live on Magandang Umaga with all cameras focused on their next of kin. Rapists would have their penises amputated on Pinoy Big Brothers as added bonus to the show. Murderers will get executed every Saturday at the SM Mall of Asia or the Araneta Coliseum. Government officials and personnel caught stealing will be hanged in public at the Ayala Malls on Tuesdays to Fridays.

In the Philippines, democracy has a strange way of creating inconvenience to the ordinary people whose ordinary lives are driven mad by people who deserve to just roll over and die.

Ganun na lang ba?

Lessons from a carnage

Unlike other hostage taking scenarios in the Philippines, this one did not have a happy ending. Eight (or nine) people died in the carnage that brought the Philippines notoriety for being one of the most dangerous places to live in.

It started around 1030AM and ended 11 hours later leaving a bloodbath in one of the worst crimes ever committed by a Philippine law enforcement officer.

Whatever triggered it and how it ended is a story in itself.

But the questions asked by the public and the lessons learned should by an eye opener for our police force, who lately have been under the microscope from an appreciative public. Obviously, the torture of suspected criminals in my Facebook wall has received ambivalent responses from Filipinos and the foreign community. Some call it barbaric. Others, it was a form of justice.

The carnage was simply that - a balance of injustice in this country, where the rich don't go to jail and where the poor are miscasted as the scum of the earth. Indeed, if you've got the dough, or you're related to someone in power, then you're treated differently.

Now that the hostage drama is over, a post hoc analysis on the blame game is inevitable.

Who was responsible and could this event have been prevented?

1. Why did the driver stop to pick up the policeman who was armed with an armalite? I mean, the news reports had it that the policeman "hitched" a ride in Intramuros then announced the hostage situation when they were at the Quirino grandstand. And how did he get loose? The driver claimed he used a nailcutter. What a boyscout! Always ready - for this scenario? Duh? And the police investigators just brushed him off as a victim as well.

2. If you watched the LIVE events, you would have laughed at the slow pace of rescue. The policeman-hostage-taker was ready to die. And no one took him seriously. Of course, until he started counting bodies.

3. Then there was the media. Both ABS-CBN and GMA were rushing to the scene. While I admire their bravery at covering such a daring assault, there should be rules on hostage taking and MUST be more sensitive about the matter. Unfortunately, the bus had a TV set in it. And the hostage taker had a full view of what was going on outside. Including the way the police manhandled the brother of the policeman. Right after the manhandling scene, the carnage began. The number of bodies started piling up.

4. The rescue was pitiful. It was comedy cum drama. It just showed how much lack in training our police officers have. Not to mention the poor judgment of media! It turned out to be a circus and I am sure that media will always hide under the cloak of freedom of information, a clause so loosely applied to what they want to say without taking the total situation into consideration. Of course, some people attacked the slow rescue pace of the police, but you must be watching too much NCIS or CSI to get into this conclusion. In fairness, I guess the policemen who were at the scene had to contend with very little equipment including bullet proof vests and other paraphernalia for the rescue. No one wanted to be the next to die.

The government will now have to review this after all the dust has settled. At the end, it would be pathetic that the only excuse we can give is that we need to be forgiven and understood...for after all, this is the banana republic.

[As a background of the bemedaled policeman, copy this link on why he was dismissed from the police force.
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=605632&publicationSubCategoryId=63]

CSI Manila (Jason Ivler arrest)

You gotta hand it to the Filipino police (or should I say, NBI, but what's the difference)!

I was watching the news of the arrest of Jason Ivler, the fugitive Fil-Am who's wanted for 2 counts of murder. The long and short story of it was that he has involved in a road rage a year ago, and a repeat performance of his anger on a few months ago. A P1Million ($22,000) had a bounty on his head, after the second murder on the son of a Malacanan official.

I am attaching the link as seen on You Tube on his arrest.

It was interesting how media men handled the crime scene by being on the way, grabbing the camera during the shooting melee, pointing at the weapons and places in the house where the arrest took place with their fingers, how Ivler was carried out of his house with barely his shorts and underwear showing and his butt all in the air.

I think I watch too much CSI, Criminal Minds, the Mentalist, and other American detective shows that I think we treat crimes here like some sensational show. Darn it! And when the media men get shot during the operation, they cry that the cops didn't handle the scene of the crime well. Sanamagan this country!

Of course, had the media not been there (not only to blunder the whole operation and cover the arrest), Ivler would have met Satan earlier!


Watch the video clip:





POSTMORTEM

While I am not a fan of GMA, I am in awe with Cerge Remonde, her faithful press secretary. She is lucky to have had someone who would die for her (literally and figuratively). My condolences to his family whom he left behind. At 11:54AM this morning, Mr. Remonde, at 51 years old, passed away after a heart attack in his residence.