IT'S funny how there will always be those who find the negative in the most positive development, such as being granted a national day of protest to commemorate the declaration of martial law.
It has been a day marked by rallies, and at times, violent dispersals, throughout the years.
Now President Rodrigo Duterte had the simplest but most obvious solution: Allow the protests, send traffic policemen to ensure that there will be no traffic congestion, and then send government people to rest, so there will be less people who need to be on the streets.
But no. This is not how it used to be, and so, the automatic response is that this shouldn't be.
Since a free protest is unacceptable, the move then becomes fodder for more snipes from the discontented, as those who have long demanded for change apparently only demand so when change is not coming. Take on their challenge, and they call for a status quo.
This can be likened to firecrackers during the Holiday Season.
Every year, the warning is raised against firecrackers. Every year, both young and old lose fingers and limbs and lives because of firecrackers. And it's not as if people do not know the dangers of firecrackers. But being Filipinos, first, there is machismo. That is the very reason why there are more males who lose fingers than females. It's the macho in them. They are brave, they can handle firecrackers. To top off the macho image, they do it while drinking liquor with friends. Explosives plus alcoholic drinks plus braggadocio, a deadly mix.
Every year then, needless injuries are inflicted all because, as many would say when interviewed over television news, "That is how it has always been."
In Davao City, its government and its people decided, they have had enough. Thus, during Christmas season of 2001, it was decreed by then City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte that all kinds of firecrackers will be banned. The following year, this was passed as a city ordinance.
Of course, there were pleas to allow the pyrotechnics, to allow a centralized fireworks display, and there were pleas from some Chinese groups who brought forward their tradition of creating noise to scare off bad spirits and bring on prosperity for the coming year. The reply was simple: no exemptions. It is in allowing exemptions when people will start ignoring the law. Having been told that and seeing that the government is looking out for the benefit of the majority and most especially the children, the citizens obeyed.
From then on, not one single finger was blasted off a person's hand in the city. Not a single one, while the whole country still mark every Christmas and New Year countdown with a count-up of how many have been injured.
That is an example of a simple and commonsensical solution to a problem that has been allowed to fester for decades.
Now here's the decades-old rallies that gets dispersed every year. The simple solution of not dispersing them and letting them be seems unacceptable to the protesters. Who would want a protest without the drama and state repression.?It's just not the right setting.
But do we really have to have the drama and state oppression when we can actually gather as one, identify the problems, and as citizens of one country work out solutions?
This brings us back to firecrackers and how people keep at it despite warnings. As the Tondo residents who celebrate New Year's Eve with the loudest firecrackers would often be quoted as saying on television during New Year's countdown, "Ito na ang nakagawian eh!"
What a pathetic life that is, to risk injuries and fires and other losses for a practice that never really benefited anyone except the firecracker manufacturers and the machismo of some.
Today, our children have been allowed some time off, and government workers as well. Let us make use of this time to ponder on what we can do to ensure that our country grows more to benefit the greater masses. Maybe the solution is really simple and will not even require making effigies and carrying streamers. Maybe it is as simple as building a stronger community of caring people in our own neighborhood.