Thursday, November 6, 2014

Can we just stop and talk awhile?

“Maybe then we could go for a ride drive down to the countryside. Get away from the gray and frenzied hurly-burly of the city life.”  JOSE MARI CHAN

By Alex P. Vidal

THERE has been so much hatred and violence in the local, national and international news these past weeks.
Crimes, immorality, political bickering and graft and corruption have dominated the headlines and overshadowed so many positive events in the fields of foreign relations, education, arts, science and sports.
An Iloilo provincial official announcing to the world in a national event her displeasure toward her philandering husband and wishing in jest that he be injected with an anti-Ebola virus so that his womanizing days will come to a screeching halt.
A former Iloilo municipal mayor hauling her estranged husband to court for physical and verbal abuse.
A city hall consultant lambasted by his wife in the social media because of, again, womanizing.
Cain and Abel tearing each other apart publicly like real life enemies and dragging the name of the city mayor in their brutal skirmish.

INSULTS

A city mayor and his erstwhile councilor allies swapping insults in their Facebook accounts and their respective sympathizers joining the fray.
A capitol bigwig accused of enriching himself at the expense of super-typhoon Yolanda victims and hiding his loot in an island.
A tough municipal mayor accused of ordering the murder of the assailants of his son, including the assailants’ family members who wanted to rescue the victims.  
Tensions have exacerbated in the national level due to the endless muckraking of the main dramatis personae trying to malign each other in preparations for the mega political derby in 2016.
A governor apologizing not to his wife but to his younger mistress for the leaked sex photos and video that have caused a tidal wave of humiliation among their respective households before the national media.
A transvestite murdered by an American sailor for not revealing his/her true sexual preference.
Cops accused of "hulidap" and molesting women lawbreakers under their custody.

EBOLA

Filipino peacekeepers coming home from Ebola-hit Liberia treated like Ebola patients and driven away to a secluded Luzon municipality for quarantine as their superior officers and town officials squabble.
Even the social media is not spared from man’s hateful fulminations.
The rift between Senate President Frank Drilon and his former media consultant for Iloilo, Manuel “Boy M” Mejorada, has escalated in the national level when Mejorada filed plunder and graft raps against his former boss before the Office of the Ombudsman.
Drilon’s Iloilo sympathizers have banded together and impeached Mejorada’s integrity as a retaliatory act.
There is now a smorgasbord of name-calling, insults, character assassination and even physical threats.
The war has deepened and emotions are at fever-pitch.
Meanwhile, Mejorada continued to fire his artillery in the national media hopping from one TV and radio station to another in a bid to cripple Drilon in the bar of public opinion.
Tension exacerbates each time followers of both parties engage in unnecessary word war and heated debates in the media programs and coffee shops.  
Why don’t they take a break first, stay calm and sober, stop and talk awhile?

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