EDITORIAL - Juan Time: A matter of attitude

“Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” should best describe the noisy initiative to achieve “Juan Time” or the single synchronized time for all of the Philippines. The problem about Filipinos being notorious for not coming on time is not about time. It is a matter of attitude.

The Philippines is not without a single official time. The keeper of Philippine Standard Time is Pagasa and Filipinos who want to be precise in their times have long discovered where to check their time against. Sadly, only very few find the effort worthy and appealing.

It is therefore not a matter of having the correct official time. Everybody can have the correct and official time on their watches and clocks all the time, but if they have very little regard for the virtue of punctuality, the most precise of times makes very little difference.

Again, it is not a matter of having the correct time but of having the correct attitude. It is simply in the character of the Filipino to fear being first at the appointed place at the appointed time.

Among Cebuanos, it is not uncommon and strange to hear someone say: “Dili lang kaayo ta magdali kay basin kita’y mag-una didto.” And that is just the Cebuanos. The rest of the nation is exactly the same. It is a national phenomenon. It is the character of the nation.

The fuss about synchronizing all the watches of the nation to a single official time is therefore not a very practical and realistic endeavor. Its “too much ado about nothing” is not vastly different from “barking up the wrong tree.”

For of what use is having the correct time when the problem is not wanting to be there on time? Without any real effort to overhaul this flaw in the Filipino character, all that can be achieved by having “one single time” is Filipinos all ending up late together as a nation.

A fastfood TV commercial says it all. An employee who came late for a meeting was asked by his angry female boss if he had any deliveries to report. Missing the point due to tardiness, he blurted out an order of his favorite fastfood breakfast for delivery.

The eye-opener is this: For people who want to be on time, no single official time is needed. In fact no watches or clocks are necessary. But for people who do not care about being punctual, a shipload of watches will never be enough to make them on time.