HE said — SHE said

“They did not know how to respond to such a situation that chaos ruled at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, besmirching once again what government, past and present, had tried to improve.

I no longer wonder how our politicians and government leaders had their brains wired with greed and incompetence. It is as wont a given. But how we learned to accept and live with what we have now continues to baffle this rubbernecker.

Houston, the problems are here in the Philippines. We are prepared to crashland.

Two days (as of this writing) and the Xiamen plane that skidded off the runway was still at the grassy portion where it lost force and halted and thankfully nobody was seriously hurt.

It sent airport authorities scampering to appear busy but not really knowing what to do exactly. They did not know how to respond to such a situation that chaos ruled at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), besmirching once again what government, past and present, had tried to improve — that of a supposedly efficient airport that welcomes and sends off citizens and visitors. Our airports are our mirrors to the world.

But how can we send positive images abroad, even if we clean Boracay and make EDSA traffic-free, if we could not present our airports as big, clean, efficient and laglag-bala free?

The Xiamen misadventure was the icing on the bad, soggy cake. The NAIA had been beset by problems even before the Chinese plane skidded off the track. Long lines have been a regular feature in the immigration boxes. Lack of personnel was cited — mismanagement they won’t admit as the real reason.

Then, step out of the airport. If a visitor or a returning citizen still holds his senses after what he had gone through from the plane to the NAIA gates, dismantled road blocks await him outside.

His car will have to play the patintero with the road blocks, repair signs and barriers, street peddlers, jaywalkers, confusing road signs and signals and, if his luck totally runs out, kotong cops, snatchers, kids stealing side mirrors and street beggars.

Welcome to the Philippines! You are at home with the most hospitable people of the world.

Now give me your wallet if you don’t want anything to happen to you.

Then he sees cars still without license plates, three years after President Rody Duterte promised to bring about change — change that made 16 million or so hope for a better country, after barely two years of Erap, 10 of Gloria and six years of Noynoy.

He would be lucky if his driver has his driver’s license already.

The roads are a giant parking lot, either due to traffic or some entitled lot has made the outside lane his own parking space. Give me five minutes and I’ll be gone. Just wow!

And then, the potholes. Many of them were man-made. They appear everytime the elections are near.

Our congressmen had wanted the roads drilled and left for our inconvenience. Yes, never mind our inconvenience, because they are waiting for the cash release, part of which they’ll use to repair the roads their preferred contractors have destroyed and more parts of which they will keep to fund their campaign. It is a cycle and expect more of them in 2022.

Maybe it was false patriotism that made me stay here and accept all these. This rubbernecker thought there was hope for the Filipino. Maybe there still is. But it doesn’t look like it will come soon.

The President should fire all officials responsible for the bad roads and the bad airports to give us a semblance of change.

He should replace those in the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority who have burdened commuters and car owners with policies that deny them their due despite paying all the taxes, including road users’ tax for roads they could not use.

Or he would not be able to stop Filipinos from leaving if chance should come their way.

I think I made the mistake of deciding to stay.

If my children will, I’ll wave them away and tell them good luck on their better journeys. There is not much to expect here.

“That road widening already took irritatingly long, “uglifying” the surroundings.

If former President Noynoy Aquino got criticism for his administration’s core message of “Daang matuwid,” current President Rodrigo Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build” program is fast gaining ire for giving Filipinos a seemingly endless supply of rough roads (daang malubak, if you will).

In Davao, there are roads that have been tagged as “forever unfinished.”

This led Duterte to call out erring contractors during a press conference on 27 January 2018, warning them “to either finish their projects or face cancelation of their contracts or, worse, face suits,” as one site put it.

In Metro Manila, it has been rough going to and from many areas, from Quezon City to Makati and probably beyond, I swear.

Waze has given me a chance to take paths I never took before, all in the name of time-saving, but sad to say, many of these routes are far from being smooth, let alone picturesque.

The main avenue nearest our residence is an example of one road story to befuddle the mind.

This street used to be traffic-free, smooth, relatively quiet and tree-lined with proper sidewalks.

Over the past 25 years, we saw it transform into a busy main road as development moved northwards to Fairview and Commonwealth.

First, many of the big, beautiful trees disappeared as buildings rose along with the decibel of daily traffic.

Then, a center island was built, its design littered with the politician’s initials and the overall view changed. Gone was the nice, tree-lined avenue.

Over the years, we saw the sidewalks dug up for water pipes maintenance or upgrading.

These sidewalks were, not too long ago, fixed and nicely tiled. When they decided to widen the roads due to the worsening traffic in the area, said tiles (still quite new) were removed and discarded.

Suddenly, the whole length of the road had an extra lane, to create which the original sidewalks and many establishments’ frontage had to be dismantled.

The widening should have been good for traffic — except that until now, the road remains unfinished.

The new and unfinished lane has left the road uneven, slowing down traffic as drivers have to slow down to go from this sunken lane to the next which is higher and because no asphalt has been put in to make it smooth.

That road widening already took irritatingly long, “uglifying” the surroundings with broken-up cement and those pavers that we only got to enjoy for a limited time.

But now, I have seen another set of barricades being put up by another contractor, this time for the water department, I think, because they are, once again, digging up the sidewalks to install those tubular cement monstrosities and, when done, putting back the sidewalk as they go from one block to the next.

So far, what passes their standards as a sidewalk is, quite honestly, ugly. The “finished product” looks like the work of someone who just happened to buy vinegar and ended up in construction — haphazardly done, an eyesore and so uneven that anyone walking in the dark (because, you know, streetlights are another story), you could trip on a bump of asphalt that some contractor had approved as done, finito!

Along roads I have no choice but to take as I go to work, signs of the aggressive infrastructure development are everywhere. The massive tractors, the humongous prefab structures…the poor, potholed roads destroyed by the overwhelming weight and volume of traffic; the measly number of workers visible to the eye; the disgruntled faces of motorists who must endure the slow road to progress.

It’s a story oft-repeated in many other parts of the country. The “build” program is apparently way too massive for the current system of doing things in the Public Works and Highways department. Secretary Mark Villar, while good-intentioned, must step up to fix the process, discard the problematic areas such as inefficient contractors and make sure the road to progress is smooth and well-paved.