Fun!

I once thought all the fun one gets at LP rallies lie in the possibility of bringing home free rubber slippers. How wrong I was.

The real fun, it turns out, lies in watching nice nymphets do naughty things onstage. They entertain pot-bellied men provided they wear regulation yellow shirts. Their dance routines are almost pornographic.

What a bash they had in Laguna last Thursday: ribald shows in the heat of midday. Their slogan ought to be: It’s more fun in the LP!

Pictures from that memorable day in Laguna, including funny signs at the urinals, circulated quickly across our overheated social media networks.

The word quickly went around. Those pretty young things prancing about the stage were “gifts” to the birthday celebrant from MMDA Chairman Francis Tolentino.

That information opened a whole new dimension of the man we had previously known only as a shifty eyed bureaucrat obsessed with self-promotion. For months he exasperated us with his incompetence on the job and his propensity to twirl around his own words.

Now we know he has other virtues. He is perfectly capable of bringing cheer to perverts.

If bringing sexy dancers to every rally is Francis Tolentino’s strategy to win a seat in the Senate, he is entitled to his own bizarre ideas. This is a free country. He is our Berlusconi.

But wait, Tolentino issued a denial. He says he did not bring the girls to that party – whose guest of honor was LP standard-bearer Mar Roxas. Other sources contradict Tolentino’s denial, however.

This matter about the dancing girls is no trivial matter, only because some lying seems to be happening in its aftermath. Maybe the troika of Pimentel, Cayetano and Trillianes might want to hold a public hearing on this matter.

Of course Tolentino is the same person who denied he threatened motorists documenting extortion by his “constables” with charges for violating the Anti-Wiretapping Act. Those of us who think we heard him make that threat, seconded by his own lawyer, probably imagine things.

This is the same person who claimed it was his idea to bring in the Highway Patrol Group to restore order along Edsa. The proposal actually originated from the Management Association of the Philippines.

This is the same person who thought up such grand failures as “motorcycle lanes,” “Christmas lanes” and, thank heavens, the aborted “bicycle lanes” along the main avenue. The net result of all his grand efforts was the rapid descent of our streets to unimaginable chaos.

Now he asks us to vote him to the Senate. On what basis should we do that, his platform of failure?

I will give that a thought, but only if he comes up with a suitable explanation for why he was cavorting in Laguna on a regular workday, when he should be at his desk at MMDA headquarters.

I always thought there was something off about Francis Tolentino. Now, at least, I am sure he has no inkling about how much he is despised by the very constituency he should have been serving – so much so he is actually seeking a Senate seat.

Worst

Traffic app Waze, working out the large numbers, arrived at the conclusion that Metro Manila has the worst traffic on earth.

This has to be the final verdict on the quality of work our great leader, Francis Tolentino, put in after over five years on the job. What a timely verdict this is, coming nearly on the last day of Tolentino’s tenure.

The conclusion Waze reached comes as no surprise. This is not news to all of us who endure traffic jams day in and day out, watching our lives slip away like the fine sand on hourglasses.

Tolentino should have no problem with name-recall in Metro Manila. His name is cursed ten million times a day. No community on earth is as unhappy about government neglect and the cruelty of daily life as the people of the National Capital Region.

There is no reason to doubt the conclusion Waze has reached. The traffic software tracks the desperation of all of this forsaken city’s motorists as cling to the possibility technology might find them a way out of hell.

No city approximates the depth of despair of Metro Manila commuters. They leave home at an earlier hour each day not knowing how they might find a way back in the evening. At the slightest downpour, traffic flow could completely freeze. What used to be an hour’s commute could suddenly become a ten-hour ordeal.

We all know how helpless one could feel trapped in our roads on a really bad night. Unable to move forward or sideways or wherever, one feels completely abandoned by his government. Or maybe those whose duty it is to govern simply do not give a damn.

We have been governed by a bunch with no aptitude at all for anticipating problems. No new infra has been provided Metro Manila the last five years. No improvement in the country’s logistical system happened.

Now they find the gall to ask voters to choose continuation of more of the same incompetence. This has to be a cruel joke.

There are a few officials who truly personify unique amalgam of vanity and non-achievement characterizing this administration. Tolentino is easily one of them.

After failing all of us so badly, they now think our voters should install them in higher office. They have such low opinion of our voters.

Hubris is too kind a term to describe what drives Tolentino and his ilk as they prepare to present themselves as candidates.