Something is happening which we hope it would not last for long. We are beginning to lose that initial willpower manifested after the flood control mess erupted. Any sensitive Filipino would recognize the symptoms – silence, inaction, malaise, lethargy. Where has that burst of enthusiasm, the zeal, passion, determination that was expressed in anger and disgust that overwhelmingly swept the nation gone? Where are the lofty words from varied sectors seeking action and tangible outcomes? Where are the young and the old, the corporate manager and the worker, the urban dweller and the farmer? They are still there but they seem to have lost their steam.

Even the media is silent as there is not much to report. Like in the past, the pattern appears to follow the same course. Legislative hearings, creating new committees and commissions, and listening to suspected perpetrators. Except for a congressman who had earlier left for abroad but had recently returned and been issue a subpoena, and a few suspects who are still freely moving around, we have yet to hear about the big fish and the principal beneficiaries. How about Curlee and Sarah Discaya and the contractors in the 15 firms that cornered the funds earmarked for construction? Most of them were found to own dozens of expensive cars, real estate, houses and condos, and wallowing in wealth that was earmarked for infrastructure that could have promoted the productivity of farmers and laborers.

This picture of how greed had continued to keep a majority of our countrymen in the quagmire of poverty makes us weep. A friend expresses the current mood when she said, “What’s happening in our country is deeply alarming as it makes us feel almost helpless…The rallies seem to make no impact. It seems like surrendering everything to God is the only thing left for us to do. We appear to be fighting an enemy among us like a spiritual warfare using greed, confusion, pride, mistrust, anger, etc. to turn people against each other.

Columnist Ciel Habito notes: “Ours is a country with a serious learning disability. Signs are all around us. We elect leaders who promise us heaven but keep giving us hell. And we keep voting them into power anyway. But learning from both our failures and our neighbors’ success seems something we are simply incapable of. So we now find ourselves getting worse, not better with each passing decade. Learning disability due to severe malnutrition and stunting is very real. I’m convinced that most of our country’s woes ultimately traces back to how we have failed our farms and farmers.” He attributes this problem to the way government is handling the direction in our agriculture sector.

But perhaps we should stop beating ourselves for missed opportunities. We must now look forward. As poet Rafael Zulueta da Costa noted in his poem, “Like the Molave,” we must be “firm, resilient, stand, rising over the hilltop unafraid”, as “there are a thousand waters to be spanned, there are a thousand mountains to be crossed, there are a thousand crosses to be borne.”

The people must then work together to make the nation strong, he noted, as he further highlights the important role of the younger generation in this struggle. ([email protected])