Just say ‘Aaaargh’

It’s not surprising that people are letting their blood boil for no apparent reason these days. A cursory look at goings-on at this very moment can leave one weak or aghast or both.

First, Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) secrets are spilling out and giving us one smirking Alice Guo and cohorts in our faces for days on end.

Second, Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KoJC) secrets are bubbling to the surface and giving us one Pastor Apollo Quiboloy and co-accused deadpanning shocking allegations of human trafficking.

And third, the barely concealed animosity rising out of the budget hearings from personalities that we will surely hear more of come 2025, on the road to the Senate polls.

The upcoming midterm elections are not far from our minds when looking at every little piece of news these days. Motives aside, we may think it’s just “normal” to expect antics and revelations when any election approaches. It’s not surprising, we tell ourselves, for political parties to have already strategized and started moving to get their pawns in place. Par for the course, we say, only that it no longer sits unnoticed these days.

The news keeps getting wilder, and the hearings ongoing at the Senate just today breeds unwanted thoughts — suspicions we long to deny, to prove wrong, to laugh off as just another day in paradise — because they sound too much like fiction, but it’s a plot we cannot simply turn off at whim. And we shouldn’t even try.

Therein lies the pain — when unreality fills the reality to the undeniable brim.

Again, I wonder. How did an Alice Guo or Guo Hua Ping end up a local politician, then manage to escape the country? How did she fool the people of Tarlac, and let a POGO facility thrive in plain sight even as it was supposedly a hub of human trafficking?

How are we, today, listening to Chinese translators replying to all the questions being asked by Senator Risa Hontiveros, and maybe feeling just a little invaded?

These murmurs of sleeper cells no longer sound too crazy, following reports of similar embedded persons in the United States, theirs from Russian soil. It’s too compelling to ignore as the world spirals into a situation that in the movie kingdom would be categorized as apocalyptic.

People are much too jaded now for political wannabes to try and twist their arm with the usual gambits. Star power? Well, PDP Laban will have actor Philip Salvador in the senatorial fray. The party’s campaign manager will be none other than Senator Robinhood Padilla, with the blessing of former President Rodrigo Duterte.

For their part, some political parties allied with the Marcos administration have banded together as a strategy for the coming elections. Their potential slate could be filled with superstars: Sotto, Villar, Cayetano, Marcos, Revilla, Tolentino, Abalos, Pacquiao, Tulfo, Lacson, Binay and Lapid. Talk about “winnability” — those surnames will make ballots ring on name recall alone.

At this point, we may have already given up on the idea of getting new, fresh faces to lead the nation in these transformative times. Many a well-intentioned wannabe had all the right qualifications, only to lose at the polls. Many a capable leader had been fielded to help change the game, only to be booted out by the politicking that they have no stomach for.

The infernal question of “What’s new?” will still get a resounding “nothing,” as many feel that traditional politics still rules the nation.

What jars the mind is this constant call for a “Bagong Pilipinas,” yet we see the likes of Guo Hua Ping running a show for years in our country while traitors in our midst have allowed such a thing to happen.

It’s the corruption that’s killing us, and I, for one, am fuming that nothing much has ever been done about it.