THE way supporters of the views of the New People's Army (NPA) and their "victorious" punitive action on the Lapanday Food Corporation somehow reminds all and sundry, except those living in an echo chamber, the importance to be relevant to the times.
While in the industrial world it was the cog and the wheel with the labor force being the cog to turn the wheel, in this post-modern age, there is a whole different dynamics and it's not longer just a cog and a wheel being turned around. It's a whole network of roles that do not just involve one wheel. Amid all this is the importance of each one's role not as a signal or radiation, depending on the skills set.
These skills sets are what President Rodrigo Duterte was belaboring during the campaign period wherein he said that expertise among the skilled workers cannot be honed because of contractualization since a person needs to take on any job as he works from contract to contract. Bottomline, jobs.
It's not really the contracts, onerous or not. It is the jobs.
Lapanday offered jobs to less skilled workers, the manpower pool that most needs them to survive another day. Now the facilities that provide the jobs are gone, along with it, thousands of asthmatic Dabawenyos wheezing and stuffing their noses on nebulizers. The economic cost is not just on the rich Lapanday owners and managers, the economic cost is on the lowly workers and health-challenged asthmatics as symbolized by Mang Larry, the fish vendor that Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio was ranting about.
The left-inclined and left-aligned can argue till their veins bulge out and their voices become hoarse, but the action of burning the wheel to punish vehicle owner as authorities said punishes the workers more. It's a fact that while indeed the owners may suffer losses, they will still have the wealth they have. That is merely stating a fact. How that can be interpreted any other way brings us closer to that echo chamber the left-inclined and left-aligned live in where the workers are the exploited class and the capitalists are the exploiters, no in between, no hope for the workers except overturning that "tatsulok" as sang and written by Buklod and revived by Bamboo.
The problem with this "tatsulok" thing in the post-modern era is that there is very little effort to grow the idea and make it acceptable to the people. They just want to ram it down the collective throats of all, declare: "This is what we want!" and expect that what they want will be handed over to them despite the vast majority's refusal, by being armed.
There are even taunts how the Philippine government welcomed the China's People's Liberation Army Navy Flagship Destroyer and yet condemns the Philippine communist NPA, as if the destroyer fired its cannons at us as it arrived and burned a factory as the rebels did.
The echo rings loud and clear, deafening reason, confounding themselves who have found a haven inside the chamber.
This said, we join the city in condemning all terroristic acts especially those being paraded as punitive actions to serve the people. Let us remind ourselves how the terrorist Abu Sayyaf shout praises to their God after beheading their victims for money. Something like that, although not as gory.