Present bad roads, a political strategy

The Sinulog has evolved probably beyond the wildest imaginations of its original presentor, former Customs Collector David Odilao, (and my favorite former top honcho of the NUSP days) to become a national, if not international spectacle. Naturally, people from all corners of the world come to our city to feel the excitement of hundreds of thousands of happy persons doing the now famous dance rhythm on our streets. Of course, a great majority of them come here to pay homage to the Santo Niño.

So, some friends of mine from a distant shore are scheduled to come, with the Holy Child, first in their mind. We have arranged for their visit. To prepare a secondary jump off point for them, a venue where they can repair to after their coming in and out of the mardi gras, I went to our law office in front of the University of San Carlos. I rarely go there because I am (and have been for few years now) enjoying a self-imposed sabbatical much ahead of my retirement age.

On my way, I was jolted. Gen. Junquera Street, somewhere near our office, is a road that Cebuanos do not deserve. Certainly, we can be, as I am, ashamed of its terrible condition to such a degree that, I think, the revolutionary leader for whom it is named, might prefer his name written off. It is so full of deep and large road ruts and the remaining asphalt so uneven that notwithstanding the expensive shock absorbers of my comfy vehicle, I literally got banged.

We must consider that, if only from a myopic point of view, Junquera is not distant from the Sinulog route. Surely, thousands of our visitors will walk on it and the fear that strikes me most is that their impressions on the road’s desolation will be one of collective, perhaps quite unreasonable, scorn on our city. Rather than savor the heart-warming festivities, they may depart for their homes disturbed by the ugliness of our streets.

For a while, I thought that the ugly state of Junquera Street’s disrepair was an isolated one. It could be the city administration’s way of punishing the barangay for having elected a captain who is more visible with the opposition ranks. To counter balance this prejudice, I went around and, to my horror, I saw a number of our streets in similar bad shape. Still others are in worse shape.

Why are many of our streets not repaired? Why can we not keep our roads well paved for hassle free ride? Do our leaders not realize that some of the traffic accidents can be avoided were people and drivers to travel on good roads? The obvious answer to these related questions somehow lies in comprehending the bad side of practical politics. It is a part of the city administration’s scheme of electoral campaigning. Sad to say, we are suckers for this unrepublican (sorry for the corruption of the word) strategy.

At a time like this when we are still in the middle of our politicians’ term, they do not care much. Unfortunately, on a quid pro quo basis, we are party to it. They do not give a hoot to our welfare because we also do not sing praises to our elected leaders for maintaining our streets in ideal condition.

It may not even be far from the truth that our administrators wittingly prefer that our streets be in terrible state. Campaign strategy, they call it. We must keep in mind that in several occasions in the past, when elections were approaching, our elected officials conducted massive road repair programs appropriating, for the purpose, huge amounts of money. In embarking on the project, they made sure that they were seen, for impact and added mileage, on the project sites and generous news written about their “concern” to give us good roads. Why, to make sure that we saw their effort, they even had to work deep into the night! And yes, we also took the bait by voting for them forgetting that for most part of our officials’ term, we had streets in terrible condition.

Having recalled this political strategy, I laid to rest my jolting experience on Junquera Street.

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