What’s done is not done

Once upon a time in this godforsaken land, I went through the process of getting my voter ID sometime in 2015. First, they made us line up in the barangay hall near our church; it was a project undertaken by the local officials in coordination with the Commission on Elections. We filled out forms and had our biometrics and photos taken. But the IDs never came.

So, some three years later, we went to do the same thing in some office at the City Hall. After a few months, only one of our group got his ID, and the rest thought, oh, maybe ours are not ready yet. Those voter IDs never came.

Three presidents later, I keep thinking about those fruitless efforts we made as hopeful, loyal Filipinos in this country. These days, more than ever, it reminds me of all the wasted years — how we always imagined that things would get better with every fresh slate promising everything short of the sun and moon.

Come next election, it will be different. Gone now (we believe) are the starry-eyed voters who could so easily be swayed by smooth words. The youth vote will have even more of an impact by then, egged on perhaps by the likes of an unrepentant, demanding sort like Kiko Barzaga.

Yet short of idolizing a loose cannon, the youth would likely base their choices on the major issues that have been rocking our world -– the flood control projects, the overbuilds, the shortfalls, the money ghosted into oblivion.

To give you an idea of how brazen elected officials have become and, as such, all those who follow them: in Bicol, they had the gall to build a perimeter fence around Mayon Volcano. Yes, they fenced off the most perfect cone-shaped volcano in the world.

Reports about this illegal fencing project by Sunwest Inc., the construction company that is (used to be?) partly owned by congressman-in-hiding Zaldy Co, has been found to be bereft of permits from the proper authorities.

This means the fence project, already two kilometers long, has been undertaken even without an Environmental Compliance Certificate on land that the Land Registration Authority reportedly has no record of ownership. Also, the construction is within the permanent danger zone declared by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

One, no application for permits had been filed. Two, the contractor has its guards telling local farmers to ask for permission to enter areas they and their families had been working for decades.

The real mystery is how local government agencies did not seem to notice anything wrong until reports came out and locals talked to media about their sentiments on the fencing off of their beloved Mayon.

It’s like how President Bongbong Marcos only said something about the ghost projects after the typhoons and floods could no longer let anomalous contractors hide behind slapdash papers and permits that no one bothered to look at until reporters came to examine every detail.

It’s like how only 22 classrooms were built when 1,750 were targeted for the year.

People tend to look to the wrong side of the room when pinpointing blame.

It’s not the contractors who had the gall to pay themselves billions for jobs that were never done.

It’s not the contractor who thought he could do anything, take control of land and fence off a national treasure. It’s not the parents who have too many kids so that there are never enough classrooms in which to educate them.

Well, it’s not just them.

It is the government that let its public servants and government workers get away with shoddy work, taking their salaries and letting projects like a kilometers’ long fence continue to be built until people began asking too many questions.

It is an administration that is too afraid to disrupt the system, too afraid of repercussions, or too uncertain about what is right and deserved by the people.

It’s just funny how some things in this country are done when they should not be, and those that truly matter never get done at all.