How many politicians will it take to drive a car? Trick question: It’s impossible, because they’ll cover everything with posters, including the windshield. To quite Mika Hakkinen, it’s so sad to see Metro Manila during every election period. One reason is the pestilence of posters that are being plastered on walls, LRT and flyover support posts, and, outrageously, trees! They can’t be helping Metro Manila in any way, because you’d want to drive recklessly just to get away from all those hideously grinning faces. Only to find out you can’t, because they’re everywhere you look. Ironically, those gigantic billboards and banners hanging from buildings aren’t so bad, because they would have to be taken down after May 15. But the posters covering pretty much everything that’s standing still are bound to stay there until they just self-dissolve.
It’s a sign of the failure of our democratic system at the city or municipal level that mayors are limited to one term. A good mayor can go a long way towards maintaining a town’s progress. We’re so paranoid about corruption and incompetence because so many of our elected officials have been so.
We don’t want to repeat ourselves, but the difference that mayors can make to the quality of life in a town is nowhere more glaring than in Quezon City and Marikina.
Marikina has opened up two new major routes in the past five years. Roads are clean, parking areas are well marked, and streets are well lit. Heck, even during the recent Luzon-wide blackout, the traffic lights were working! Traffic enforcers are courteous and trustworthy, which is more than we can say about them pretty much anywhere else these days (except maybe Tagaytay).
In contrast, we were in that haven of car lovers, Banawe, just the other day. We wouldn’t really mind walking around and looking for car parts all day, but the sidewalks were covered in garbage, and soon traffic was stuck solid it was difficult to drive anywhere.
Other cases of the Q.C. government’s contempt for its constituents? Traffic lights that are always off. These include lights that were “upgraded,” with much tearing up of the road and weeks of suffering clogged traffic, only to see them never turned on. Like the one at the corner of White Plains Avenue and Temple Drive. With just a few days’ experimentation, the officials could have observed that the traffic flow could have been altered slightly, eliminating clogging at that intersection, and perhaps negating the need for a traffic light in the first place.
How about streetlights that are in place but never turned on? These include the lights at the high-speed and changing-grade sections of the C5 flyover going to Balara. Yet they have the nerve to label other lights as “Streetlighting project of” so-and-so, even when those lights had been there for years already.
Message to politicians: you don’t need to resort to labeling old lights and projects as yours. People would know from their daily experience how you’re running your city.
Message to voters: Be careful who you vote for, and hopefully we will all get what we deserve—streets that are clean, pleasant and safe to drive on.
By Jason Ang | Photos By Ulysses Ang
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