When the GMA gov’t plays politics with jeepneys, it invites a transport strike

Perhaps today’s strike by jeepney drivers – at least a segment of them – will upset traffic in Metro Manila.

If it turns violent, it could even "paralyze" sectors of our metropolis. Such strikes and disturbances wreak havoc on the daily lives of commuters – workers, employees, professionals, the masa themselves and the middle class. (The students, thankfully, are on summer break, otherwise more chaos and pain could be inflicted.) In sum, economic as well as normal life might be disrupted.

The rich? They have helicopters.

The Action Center Chief of the Department of Transportation and Communications, Mr. Ferdinand Lagman, has announced on television that the government is ready for today’s threatened strike. Does this mean the government is prepared to field alternative transportation – like trucks, buses, and so forth?

The police say they will exercise "maximum tolerance", but warn the strikers to police their own ranks to prevent hotheads from attacking drivers who won’t join, assault vehicles which "violate" their strike, or try to set up barricades to impede traffic circulation.

Our cops must be firm enough to stop anarchy from taking over our streets, and if they have to crack a few heads to do so, be our guests.

But now, let’s address the origins of the impending strike.

It’s true enough that in the past several leaders of jeepney associations like Efren de Luna of PCDO-ACTO and Medardo Roda of the militant PISTON group have been swaggering caricatures of the arrogant and insolent labor leader, frequently resorting to strikes when they fail to get what they demand from the DOTC, Land Transportation Office (LTO) and the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB).

However, aggressive jeepney tactics also have their root in pernicious government dealings. The series of transport strikes which has afflicted Metro Manila and other parts of the country is symptomatic of the corruption in key government transport agencies and the incompetence and arrogance of the heads of these agencies.

Worst of all, it’s obvious the land transport sector has recently been politicized.

For example, only last January ninety-seven (97) passenger jeepneys belonging to the pro-GMA "Federation of Jeepney Operators and Drivers Association of the Philippines" (FEDJODAP), headed by Zeny Maranan, were issued a Special Permit effective until May 31st to run their jeepneys on EDSA from Monumento (the Balintawak monument) in Caloocan City to the Muñoz Market in Quezon City. Whaat? This Special Permit was issued in defiance of an existing ban on the issuance of new and additional jeepney and bus franchises in Metro Manila.

Since 1950, when EDSA (previously known as Highway 54) was opened to vehicular traffic, EDSA has been kept completely free of passenger jeepneys, remaining an exclusive bus route.

The major reason jeepneys, which swerve and turn like drunken beetles, aren’t permitted on EDSA is because that stretch is the main artery of our metropolis. If traffic gets choked up at any point, all of Metro Manila gets strangulated.

Why in God’s – or GMA’s – name then did the new LTFRB chairperson, a former Malacañang functionary, Ms. Elena Bautista, issue a Special Permit for 97 jeepneys to operate on EDSA itself?

Notice that the permit runs only up to May 31, or a few weeks after the May 10 elections. Since the FEDJODAP, loudly pro-GMA, claims to have several thousand drivers and operators in its membership, is there a connection – with the election? Will those awful permits be renewed after the polls? Or what? It’s interesting to note that the members of the now-striking PISTON and PCDO-ACTO were not among those privileged to receive similar LTFRB "benevolence".

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The casus belli of today’s jeepney strike is the alleged LTFRB inaction on the fare increase petitions which have been pending for three or four months. Actually, the DOTC is not asserting that the fare-hike petitions are bereft of economic and legal merit. What the DOTC has been saying is that these petitions will be acted upon after the May 10 election. Why should they be tied up with the May election? If the petitions are meritorious, then they should be granted without delay. But, by the same token, if they are without merit, they should be denied outright.

Finally, the proximate trigger for transport strikes is the challenging and threatening attitude of government transport officials who prematurely declare that the strike will not succeed in paralyzing public transportation. This is usually accompanied by threats to cancel the franchises of the striking jeepneys. Look again: the strikers are not the franchise-holders or operators, the strikers are the drivers themselves.

The franchise holders can always plead that their drivers simply refused to report for work.

The coming jeepney drivers’ strike must not, of course, be permitted to paralyze the city. That’s a given.

After the "strike", it’s imperative though that the government review its attitude and its response. The truth is that jeepneys should have been junked, not just "phased out", many years ago. They were first "invented" as passenger conveyances in the mid-1940s, jerry-built out of discarded World War II surplus military jeeps which the American military ditched when they left our islands after victory over Japan.

Here it is, the year 2004 – or 58 years later, and we’re still using jeepneys! Those jeepneys have been plying our roads and thoroughfares, basically unchanged except for more chrome and slight enlargements, for more than half a century!

What? No progress? Not even beyond, worst of all, the jeepney mentality? The streets are more clogged and wretched than ever. The poor are poorer than ever. Almost every other country in Asia has passed us by. We’re left, biting their dust – and inhaling jeepney tail-pipe pollution.

Sus, our politicians are still playing politics with jeepney drivers – and still using jeepneys to make hakot.

It’s time we moved on.

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The "black propaganda" against Senator – and Vice Presidential candidate – Noli de Castro is spiraling beyond belief. It’s a nasty story, and in this gossipy land of the crabs, anything vicious and malicious achieves a slimey "life" of its own, magnifying in the retelling of the canard. It’s unbelievable that somebody with the stature of "Magandang Gabi Bayan" would resort to so cheap a scam.

One phenomenon we should decry is that of libeling and slandering people by text. The ubiquitous cellphone which sends millions of words per day buzzing through space (text messages pursue me even into the deserts of Saudi Arabia) has become the weapon of innuendo, salacious tales, and besmirching insinuations.

In Madrid, the movil (as cellphones are called in Spain) even became the trigger to detonate the ten bombs which killed 201 train commuters and wounded 1,500 others. Reputations are destroyed by rumor and text with even more painful devastation.

I sat with Noli during the dinner of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry and he told me he was bothered by those circulating "accusations" which he assured me were absolute lies and clearly untrue. I believe him. I told him that one of the disadvantages of riding high, being the front-runner in the Vice-Presidential race for one, is that many people then rush to tear you down.

The late Apo Ferdinand E. Marcos, whom I have no cause to love, once tried to console somebody who was being pelted in the media with a very wise old proverb: "People don’t throw stones at the branches of a tree if they don't have fruit on them."

De Castro is right to hit back. But he ought to roll with the punch, too. This will pass. In the end, it will be issues, and common sense, hopefully, which decide the election. If Noli is the right man for the job, he’ll win. Hopefully with the help of God, not the Comelec. Win or lose, what’s important is to fight the good fight.

Incidentally, there was an egregious error in the column I wrote about De Castro last Friday (March 26) entitled, "Noli went to pray at Lourdes before he made his decision."

In the column, I had written that I got the information from the man who had driven him and his wife, Arlene, around France and Spain, including to the shrine at Lourdes . . . " a few years ago." I was ready to blame the proofreader or copy editor, but when I checked my own manuscript I discovered that in my rush to deadline, I myself had stupidly written "YEARS ago . . ." Mea culpa. Noli had gone to Lourdes, where his driver Peter Laus said he had prayed for three days, only a few WEEKS ago.

In short, he had prayed for guidance. This unsolicited information had come from the driver who lives in Paris, not De Castro himself and so I have no reason to doubt it. Noli had a bemused and surprised look on his own face when he thanked me for the kind words I had said about him.

Life is short. Politics is fickle. Treachery and deceit lurk on every side. Through all these, only if we remain true to ourselves and to each other, can we overcome.

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Our old friend, Rod Reyes, joined me for breakfast last Sunday at the Waterfront Hotel shortly before he and the FPJ-Loren caravan moved on to Bohol for their next whistle-stop in the campaign.

The former Press Secretary, now chief of the FPJ MEDIA BUREAU, was a bit woebegone at having been misquoted in the media, including by some broadcasters and newspapermen who put a bad spin on one of his remarks.

Rod was referring to reports which alleged he (Reyes) had declared that the KNP opposition didn’t need the votes of the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC). In fact, as Rod’s news release later clarified, it was wrong of certain media "reports" to quote him as saying the votes of INC, El Shaddai and other groups were not "vital" to the victory of the FPJ-led KNP ticket".

Rod recalled that a reporter of a daily newspaper had responded to his statement that FPJ and his team had rolled up enough electoral support to clinch the coming election by throwing an innocent-sounding question at him. In that case, the newsmen had quipped: Would he (Reyes) consider INC support just "icing on the cake" of FPJ’s victory? Rod, caught off guard it seems, apparently answered "yes" to that query, although he now maintains he had followed that "yes" up with the added observation that nonetheless such support (INC’s) was essential, "especially in a tight contest with the incumbent President".

Methinks, poor Rod may not have seen the sting coming. As an old war-dog in this profession, may I comment that the media (the Press we used to more prosaically call ourselves) is full of booby-traps, and word-traps for the unwary. Everything one says can be twisted one way or another, depending on spin or interpretation. Now you know why, when the late President Diosdado Macapagal offered me the Press Secretaryship many decades ago, I had immediately declined it. (Nor did any subsequent President succeed in sticking me with that dangerous job.)

Deal with the media? Susmariosep. Might as well commit seppuku or hara kiri. At least then you’d die a swift death, not the death of a thousand cuts.

When all is said and done, Rudyard Kipling put it right more than a century ago, when he penned his deathless poem, If.

In one verse, he challenged the reader: "If you can bear to hear the words you’ve spoken, twisted by knaves into a trap for fools, or see the things you gave your life to broken, then stoop and build them up with worn-out tools . . ." then, and only then, Kipling challenged, "you’ll be a man, my son."

Kipling, the poet laureate of England, may have been the bard of Imperialism, but he knew all about manhood, fortitude – and traps for fools. Even wisest and noblest in our society frequently fall into those traps.