When I visited my doctor this week at a public hospital in Quezon City, it was “business as usual” everywhere: outpatient services, private clinics, emergency medicine, the wards, OR, charity, cashier, etc. Of course, I got my consultation and prescription.

There’s also no stopping my two nieces from graduating this month and next. One is set to receive from a state university her education degree, which would have made my mother and grandmother go crazy with pride. The other is set to graduate from senior high.

Elsewhere and everywhere, life goes on. The teachers are doing Brigada, the workers are working to keep the economy running, the riders are riding, the pharmacists are dispensing medicines, and so forth. Of course, those who manage to gather the means and the immense courage have left the country to join the millions of others who live and work abroad.

Now, enter traditional politics, and the country and the world instantly look bleak, dark and hopeless. Every time the worst traditional politicians open their mouths, it is not to give hope but to discombobulate and to foment apathy, hopelessness and resignation. Their foes give a semblance of hope, yes, but only if the public votes their way in the next election, which is a largely unexamined but widespread myth about accountability.

Life goes on in the world shaped by traditional politicians: inadequate public hospitals, poor mass transport, low wages and low salaries, high and multiple taxation, streets and entire districts without streets, unfinished and delayed infrastructure.

My niece left school due to financial problems. But when she returned to finish her studies, the state university took away her free tuition. It doesn’t make sense.

Many are happy to know about the zero balance billing in public hospitals, until reality sets in at the ER or at confinement time that the state only has a few thousand such ward beds.

The “guarantee letter” system remains intact. It is the last hope of the poor and those of the middle class who could swallow their pride lining up for aid.

As children of a former public school teacher, we know about how our mother and other mothers had to touch their own salary for basic classroom supplies, and then make up for the difference with help from loan sharks.

Politicians must be forced to solve these problems, and many other issues. Their pettiness must be exposed. A protest poster encapsulates the situation. Their luxury, our hardship.

The daily drama of politicians surely looks petty especially when we consider how they measure up to what we need as a people and country. A lot of words and cheap actions, just to keep themselves in power. It is a waste of precious time and of the salaries and budgets we pay for through multitudes of taxes and fees.

We must refuse to exclusively take sides in the battles between traditional politicians, perhaps only to defeat the worst of them. Our engagement must be anchored on our issues and concerns. Only then can we make politics work for us.

The Senate drama must result in new rules like non-payment of salaries and closure of offices of senators who flee from the law. The savings should go back to the treasury, or preferably to education, health or sports.

We should press against the many who are chronically-online and the hyperpartisans who often occupy the same spaces on behalf of traditional politicians. That are not good models of active and engaged citizens. Join unions, associations, organizations, and movements that deploy not just political ideas but concrete calls to action.

Sooner or later, the hardworking, upright, visionary, self-aware, and organized Filipinos would catch up with these politicians. We must out-organize, outwit, out-prepare them, and create a new batch of leaders to replace them. Perhaps it starts by turning the tables on them.

Let’s stop being mere observers and partisans who the politicians daily wish to deceive, stun, and shock, and who crush our hearts and all hope.

The corrupt life must not go on for traditional politicians. We must resist powerfully, in growing numbers, in actions that make them pause, in showing them that their modus operandi no longer works, in mocking their drama.

Our quality of life depends on it.

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Salute to the students who recently went to court to question the legality of permits granted to tree-cuttting operations in connection with private infrastructure projects in Metro Manila. Thank you, kids!