Treevolution. The vigorous accent in its sound jolts the unsuspecting mind.. It is meant to make a kind of “wake-up” call—an audio stimulus designed to produce a quick response. The utterance attracts by its automatic association to the sound of a social upheaval—a revolution! It is like a call for a worthy mass undertaking akin to social transformation. And somehow it catches the imagination and generates reaction of the uncritical segment of the population.
But…by its purported target of gaining a space in the Guinness Book of Records, it at once invites critical examination. What really is the primordial concern of the organizers? Is it really to save our planet by way of arresting the escalation of ‘climate change? Or is it for such vainglorious purpose as to inflate the Filipino’s penchant for hollow glory or false pride?
If the event organizers—the DENR most particularly—are sincere, they don’t need to advertise the project. They just have to pursue their mandate of strictly safeguarding our mountains and forests; they just have to implement a determined enforcement of the total log ban and arrest the law-breakers. Or they may just have to quietly plant 100 trees on a daily basis for the whole duration of their terms of office in the Department. By year-end, each DENR employee shall have planted 36,500 trees. Multiply that by the number of the DENR personnel and staff in the entire regional organization and by the number of years of their respective terms of office, they will surely come up with the targeted millions of trees to be planted. This would constitute a worthy pursuit much much nobler than counting paper bills of bribe money from the logging magnates and foreign mining concessionaires.
For all we know, this hullaballoo of a project cleverly termed “Treevolution” is just one of those ningas cogon and pakitang gilas undertakings of the government.which soon loses steam after it has started. Or it might be that a politico’s deft hand is behind it—if not Malakanyang itself? Especially that President Noynoy has been under fire for all his kapalpakan in office. And he therefore needs face-saving devices to redeem his battered popularity. Most likely this is in coordination with another activity—that of mass herding the people in the remote villages to register as voters for the 2016 elections.
Wow! Wais talaga! An ingenious well-orchestrated move to further fool the citizenry into believing this system of the government’s puppetry and masquerade will still work for a meaningful and enduring development of our society. It is another hypocritical, deceitful enterprise that will come to no sustainable benefit. Rather it just defeats its vaunted purpose.
What a deplorable phenomenon that our government has always failed to identify what is good for the nation. The underlying reason for this is the lack of a vision of an ideal social order that is supposed to be its legacy for the future generations. And this ensues from the absence of a sound analysis of the ills of our society. Failing in the primordial concern of charting a blueprint for a future social architecture, it miserably fails to direct a sound course of its governance. The present leadership, just like its predecessors, has chosen to steer the ship of State through a shameless game of puppetry. Everything the Noynoy government does is an amorphous reactive measure incongruous to the longstanding problems that need strategic sustainable solutions.
The nationalist and progressive sectors have long ago diagnosed the social ills of the nation. But their injunctions have not been heeded, much less heard. What one administration does in its own time, and which miserably fails, is just inherited by the next administration and garbed with another name. For example, the Oplan Bayanihan of Noynoy is just a continuation of the Oplan Bantay Laya of Gloria Arroyo. No difference.
Why can’t our government follow the example of Vietnam and such other young republics which have effectively emancipated their people from poverty and extricated their country from underdevelopment? Why do our leaders have to be obeisant to the US imperialists in infinite puppetry? Why can’t they effect an honest-to-goodness agrarian reform and introduce a program of nationalist industrialization? The billions of money of our 10 richest Filipino citizens—Henry Sy et al—should have been harnessed towards this end! Why are our leaders content with a vicious cycle of economic policies and programs that have proven to be utter failure from one regime to another?
Sixty-eight years! From the time we were installed as a republic in 1946! And we are still underdeveloped and our people still in abject poverty! Good sense should have taught us that we need to re-examine the system we have adhered to for a long long time! And reason and sound judgment should have already enjoined us to shun the kind of social set-up the Americans imposed on us since then!
Unsa man ta, kaliwat og hanggaw? [What are we, a race of simpletons?] Our leaders who have shown skill in perpetuating graft and corruption should have instead shown competence in addressing the misery of our people! But they have only enriched themselves and left behind the teeming masses in dire deprivation.
Enough of these noisy undertakings designed to gain Guinness records for such ‘vain festivals’ as a tree planting project! Better still, aim for being a record holder as a nation with the most number of leaders who are simpletons and mediocres.
