Worst things that happened in 2014
Now that the year is about to end, it is important and even useful for us to look back and reflect on the lessons that we all need to learn from our experiences in 2014. Learning from such events and experiences can help us make 2015 a better and more productive year. Reflecting on the lessons learned in 2014 can also help us look forward to the incoming year with more hopes and optimism. It has been a very challenging year, testing the nation's strength and resiliency. If we do not learn from 2014, then 2015 may bring a lot of pains and sufferings to our country and people. The year of the sheep can be meek as a lamb but it can also be as wayward as a goat. 2015 is a greater challenge if we don't learn from 2014.
We can summarize this year's experiences into seven clusters: First is disasters and calamities. Second, is the worsening poverty. Third, continuing threats to our national security. Fourth, rising crime incidence. Fifth, unabated corruptions. Sixth, deteriorating Infrastructures, and seventh, continuing diaspora and outward migration. On disasters, until now, we have not really fully recovered from Yolanda. It hit us in November of 2013 but its full effects and damages were really felt by the nation the whole of the current year. People are still living in tents and then came Ruby. Mayon was restless. Seniang and an earthquake have just hit the south. Floods have hit us a number of times. Lives and properties were lost. The people have been traumatized. Others have suffered from mental and emotional instability. We live in the Ring of Fire and in the Typhoon Belt. We should always be ready.
Second, the country did well in economic performance. But economic growth has not trickled down to the poor. Only the taipans and the businesmen, the corrupt politicians, actors and boxers, the gambling and drug lords, and kidnappers have made a lot of money. The farmers, subsistence fishermen, laborers, contractuals, casuals, JO workers, the squatters and the disaster victims still struggle daily for food and other basic needs. There is neither access to affordable medical care, decent housing nor to quality education. There are more beggars in the streets, more prostitutes and street urchins, people suffer in hunger, disease and homelessness, hopelessness, and anger. Third, there are internal and external threats to national security. If our government cannot even manage our prisons well, how can we stand up to China?
Fourth The drug problems have worsened. Gambling, both legal and illegal, have even become worse. And rapes of children, murder of innocents, kidnapping, robberies, even internet sex crimes and estafa have risen in unprecedented volume and frequency. The PNP crime reports are doctored and have no credibility. Even policemen are involved in extortion. The suspension of the PNP chief by the Ombudsman dramatizes how the police image has gone to the gutters. Bilibid operates a bustling drug and gambling syndicate. Road rage has reached alarming proportions. Traffic enforcers are being mauled and accused of abuses and illegal practices. The police are supposed to protect the citizens from the criminals. But who shall protect us from the police when some of them assault us with heinous crimes?
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