Tunnel vision

Ferries are late, canceled, sometimes they just don’t float. Not a great attitude for boats. Unreliable. So what did Congress do? Remove the ferry and keep the unreliability. Take the problem and bury it, literally, under 28 kilometers of ocean.

A tunnel. Naturally. Under the water. Connecting Luzon and Visayas. That’s the mindset. The ocean is dangerous, so we’re going to drive under it. Marcelino Libanan. Congressman. I call him Marcel. You don’t? Sad.

A part of you admires the confidence, while a larger part wants to stay above sea level.

The project doesn’t even exist yet, but the money? Flowing like crazy. Feasibility study. P130 million for “let’s see if we can build a bridge or a tunnel.”

Hey, Marcelino. Marcel. When your ferry is late, do you usually go, “Tunnel time?” Obvious solution. Is this a normal day, Marcel? Did we check with the fish? Are the fish OK with this? Nobody asks the fish.

We don’t solve problems, as much as relocate them to places harder to inspect. What happens if it leaks? No. The budget. It’s like pouring gold into the ocean and calling it “research.”

Everything here is studied. Flood control, studied. Bridges. We are the most studied country. Nothing works, but wow, the studies! People retire rich from lessons. Did we fix anything? No. But “we learned a lot.”

I’d love to see the inspection tour. “Bongbong, Mr. President. This is the tunnel.”

“Where?”

“Exactly.”

But maybe, look, maybe it will get built. Could happen. We couldn’t make the ferry run on time, but we’re gonna be right on schedule under the sea.

But what if it doesn’t get built? Even better. Because the money had already made the trip. It already traveled from Sorsogon to Samar. Faster than the ferry.

It doesn’t feel like progress as much as overcompensation. Like we’re building things just to announce them. Not to build them. Announce them. Everybody claps. Then, we’ll see.

They say, “Look at Japan! Look at China! They did it!” Sure, they did. But guess what? They didn’t have our corruption. You want us to trust this same system with the ocean on top? We cannot even find our sabungeros. We don’t even trust a glass-bottom boat. Now we’re committing to a glass-ceiling ocean situation.

A kid grows up with the tunnel, if it exists, and says, “You mean people used to travel on the surface?” Like it’s the strange option. Meanwhile, you’re driving through it thinking, “We couldn’t even keep the streets dry, now we’re under the entire ocean?” We skipped a few steps. Straight to Atlantis.

They’ll call it world-class. Even after you hit 10 potholes on the way there. But under the sea? We’re Denmark. That’s where we shine.

We didn’t solve the problem. We just went deeper into it. Very innovative. Everybody knows it. If we can’t handle water on the streets, what are we doing under it?