For a while now, I’ve been at loss as to what to blog. Scenes of devastation and the actual loss of life and property to millions of Filipinos was overwhelming. It didn’t feel right blogging about anything else where almost everything else will pale in gravity. Class guilt perhaps, the very fact that I am able to blog in convenience indicates that, unlike majority of Filipinos who are poor, I am “unaffected.” For a while, blogging in the time of crisis reeked of insensitivity. Some people say blogging and online social media networks played a crucial role in the relief and rescue operations. I agree. But then again, the people who need the relief aren’t online, and prolonged online “involvement” seemed to me like a convenient excuse not to immerse with the people and get dirty with the actual operations. Posting and re-posting relief and rescue operations has to translate into actual relief and rescue operations. Many times, especially during the immediate days after the typhoons, they do, as proven by the thousands who flocked to organized relief operations. With an inept and inutile government, private citizens and civilian organizations needed to fill the vacuum in social services. But for how long? Especially when all those volunteers go back to their schools and to their workplaces?
Posts tagged with bureaucracy
My parents asked me to renew the registration of our family car on the last day of renewal last week. Since I use the car the most (and I needed their permission to drive it to Subic the next day, hehe), I felt obligated to do it, despite the fact that I had other things in mind to do for that day, and that it was quite a hassle to have me do it on the deadline itself.
I was expecting to spend a few hours at the main Land Transportation Office (LTO) here in Diliman, but I ended up spending the entire afternoon figuring myself through and following the process.
I felt so naive and clueless. Nakakaloko siya since I felt like I was the only one legitimately going through the process of registration. Why? First, everyone in line knew each other, and they all seemed to be in line to register multiple vehicles each, and, hindi sa nangmamata ako ng kapwa, pero hindi naman sila mukhang may-ari ng maraming kotse. It would seem like they also knew the man behind the cashier. Some of them were even cutting in line. It seemed to me that I was the only one intensely annoyed having to go through everything while everyone else was acting as if it’s just a normal day in the park. I was thinking they were probably ‘professional’ LTO transactors/registrants whom anyone may just contact to have their LTO papers processed, so as to avoid having to go through hours of lines and dozens of bureaucratic procedures. It’s probably legitimate, I don’t know. Had I known there was such a legitimate scheme, I would have availed of it anyway.
It felt a little troubling how the need for such ‘professional transactors’ arises from the conduct of a government service. Not that I’m surprised.
Victor Villanueva
law student, national democracy activist, film school graduate, photography hobbyist