Am I the only one who gets the irony?
Here in Manila, I live near the Taguig Pateros District Hospital which was newly renovated last year. Beside the hospital, a construction crew from Manila Water and the city government is busy demolishing Champaca street for so-called "drainage" purposes. Beside Champaca street, we also have a newly constructed bus/jeep "terminal", which is simply a concrete pavement where jeeps and buses park.
So, in one area of our neighborhood, you can gaze at all these immediately: a new hospital, a road being destroyed, and a terminal of sorts. A pretty rosy picture of progress and intense government action, you might say. So what's my point? And why these facts?
Well, that's because there's something quite not right in the picture. You see, stuck in the hospital's facade is a large billboard. Along Champaca street, you see another billboard and the terminal also has its own billboard. Finally, there's another billboard standing on the other side of the terminal. It's crazy.
This leads me to the next question: what's with the billboards? The billboards are there simply because every government project must have a billboard. And the billboard must advertise what the project is, who the proponents are, and who are the politicians you should thank.
I guess for many of us, this is normal already. All our politicians do the same thing. They initiate projects using taxpayers' money and they merchandise themselves through billboards by also using taxpayers' money (Nograles, anyone?).
But that's not my point. My point is that the message conveyed in these billboards is so absurd, I wonder why nobody is talking about it yet.
For all four billboards, you see the same thing. You see the slightly malicious smiles of the following politicos: Mayor Freddie R. Tinga, Vice Mayor George A. Elias, and Congressman Jun Duenas. And then you see their tag line, their slogan, their battle cry, posted above their heads:
"We build projects, not billboards."
Pretty ironic huh?
Here in Manila, I live near the Taguig Pateros District Hospital which was newly renovated last year. Beside the hospital, a construction crew from Manila Water and the city government is busy demolishing Champaca street for so-called "drainage" purposes. Beside Champaca street, we also have a newly constructed bus/jeep "terminal", which is simply a concrete pavement where jeeps and buses park.
So, in one area of our neighborhood, you can gaze at all these immediately: a new hospital, a road being destroyed, and a terminal of sorts. A pretty rosy picture of progress and intense government action, you might say. So what's my point? And why these facts?
Well, that's because there's something quite not right in the picture. You see, stuck in the hospital's facade is a large billboard. Along Champaca street, you see another billboard and the terminal also has its own billboard. Finally, there's another billboard standing on the other side of the terminal. It's crazy.
This leads me to the next question: what's with the billboards? The billboards are there simply because every government project must have a billboard. And the billboard must advertise what the project is, who the proponents are, and who are the politicians you should thank.
I guess for many of us, this is normal already. All our politicians do the same thing. They initiate projects using taxpayers' money and they merchandise themselves through billboards by also using taxpayers' money (Nograles, anyone?).
But that's not my point. My point is that the message conveyed in these billboards is so absurd, I wonder why nobody is talking about it yet.
For all four billboards, you see the same thing. You see the slightly malicious smiles of the following politicos: Mayor Freddie R. Tinga, Vice Mayor George A. Elias, and Congressman Jun Duenas. And then you see their tag line, their slogan, their battle cry, posted above their heads:
"We build projects, not billboards."
Pretty ironic huh?
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