Irony of ironies. Last night I was caught violating the traffic coding ban (the violation happened out of sheer disorientation rather than intent; I thought it was Wednesday instead of Tuesday, the day my car is ‘banned’). What is interesting to note, however, is what transpired after a traffic cop (from the MMDA) waved me to stop. He asked for my driver’s licence and car registration papers, all of which I handed to him. He informed me that I violated the traffic car coding law (its long name, I found out, is Unified Vehicle Volume Reduction Programme; UVVRP, for short) and that he has no choice but to write me a ticket. Ignorant of the consequences of being issued a traffic violation ticket I queried him, what happens next after I get a ticket? He replied that I should go to any Metrobank branch within seven days and pay the penalty of 300 pesos. And if I didn’t, I asked. He said that the amount would double every week it remains unpaid; and, come registration time, if it’s still unsettled, I won’t be able to register my car.
I thought it was a reasonable ‘punishment’ for a petty violation so I kept quiet and let him issue the ticket. But his whole body language was signalling me that he was waiting for a bribe. Muttering excuses such as the print in the licence was too small and that he couldn’t read well and so on, it took him nearly half an hour to write the ticket, something which he could have scribbled in five. But I didn’t budge. Finally he gives me my ticket and I start walking back to my car. And then he says to me, ‘Alam mo, sana nakiusap ka na lang, puede naman pag-usapan’ (You know, you could have just pleaded; we could have ‘arranged’ it). I ignored him and got into my car.
Driving back home, the incident had me thinking: How much would he have asked? 100? 200 pesos? If I agreed to the bribery, then at least I know the money went to an underpaid traffic cop (who knows, he might have really needed the money and it might have made a difference to his family’s daily meal no matter how small). But I didn’t. Tomorrow I will be giving the money to a bank, which will remit it to the state bureaucracy, and I will never know where it will end up—lining up the pockets of high-level and more corrupt bureaucrats? Paying for the excesses and incompetence of government corporation executives? Financing Gloria’s junkets abroad? Acquiring more bullets and guns for Mindanao? Servicing an enormous public debt, part of which I’ve no doubt was spent to install a liar and a cheat as president?
The problem is less about the lack of law-abiding citizens in this country. It is the law that is problematic. And by law I mean not some abstract notion or incomprehensible text in some justices’s tome but rather its face—who represents it, who embodies it. Last night to me it was a petty, corrupt traffic cop. But everyday and in the next six years to both of us and to 80 million Filipinos it is an incompetent economic manager, anti-poor politician, seasoned liar and self-serving cheat all rolled into one. That, to me, is the crisis. It ain’t fiscal.
