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Any well-meaning writer worth his salt will agree that in case events do not turn out as what you had expected them to be, then good judgment dictates that flexibility becomes the order of the day. This means that any amount of preparation you had done for a specific article in mind would have to take a backseat if other pressing events loom prominent, vying to catch your attention.

Such is what transpires while we are in the middle of mulling over an article for this issue, actually long overdue by our standards. But, the headline-hogging incident that happened in Makati (still part, of course, of imperial Manila) just three days ago caught us all off-guard, especially for those of us who were simply going about our daily chores, even our humdrum existence, in an otherwise uneventful week.

For one, we were enjoying beautiful, sunny weather in Dumaguete last Thursday, with students of Silliman University flexing their muscles and fighting it out on the track and field to retain their colleges' standing in the university Intramural games this year. It was a welcome, much-needed treat to an otherwise wet and rainy weather for the past weeks, which was also felt by other parts of the country, no thanks to the havoc wrought by Lando, then Mina, then Lando again.

But, earlier last week though, as if it was a foreboding of bigger, more drastic things to come, I received a call from a student of mine, informing me that their former classmate (my student last semester) perished in a motorcycle accident, when no one else was looking or thinking about such morbidity. Of course, such is not the way things are, but for such a senseless incident, we are bound to ask: What else is in store for our youth today? Have they lost all hope that, in the slightest of problems or frustrations, they challenge fate and destiny, and if things do not seem to get any better, decide to go on the fast lane to end it all?

Thus, the Makati “standoff” last Thursday, from the viewpoint of ordinary Filipinos who had their own, individual concerns and undertakings to accomplish on that day, was rather unfair. It was echoed by the feisty Vivian Yuchengco of the Makati Stock Exchange when she said on television that if she were in the shoes of the military and other government authorities, she would have snipers positioned all over the place to track down the mutineers.

Aside from it being unfair, it diverted attention away from other worthy and worthwhile things happening in Dumaguete at that time — from the mundane to the significant. Last Thursday, in fact, saw the oath-taking of 209 barangay councilors, 30 barangay captains, and 30 Sangguniang Kabataan chairpersons of the city at the Dumaguete City High School . Thus, while armored tanks and gas-masked soldiers stormed into the Manila Peninsula Hotel to beat the 3 p.m. deadline for the mutineers to get out of the building, Mayor Agustin Perdices, Congressman George Arnaiz, and Vice-Mayor Woodrow Maquiling took turns extending their congratulations to the newly elected officials, public servants all.

The atmosphere pervading in Dumaguete last Thursday may well have been the sentiment of people outside Metro Manila or the National Capital Region. Except, perhaps, in institutions where peace and order is foremost among their concerns like the Philippine National Police (where, ironically, we first got wind of the news while we were doing an interview for a future column), none of the tension felt in Metro Manila was evident in Dumaguete. At least, we didn't have to worry about being home by 12 midnight to beat the curfew.

However, as former singer and now convenor of the Black and White Movement Leah Navarro said on national television, “This has become a pattern over the last few years. Should we constantly wait for a similar occurrence in the future?”

We are only a few weeks shy of a new year, but can Filipinos truly say that we look forward to better things to come in 2008? We do not need to enumerate the gory events that have come one after another in the past months to merit a reaction and an answer.

Public administration professor and former National Treasurer Leonor Magtolis Briones may have some statistical information for us to mull. Even if the present administration continues to trumpet its performance, Prof. Briones said that all these efforts would come to nil if government officials are not able to handle well the so-called “continuing shocks of political life.” And, the good professor was not even playing clairvoyant when she announced it in a recent presentation before the national association of advertisers. What occurred last Thursday may even have been unthinkable to her at that precise moment.

As Prof. Briones asserted, “While markets have a way of correcting themselves, there are certain fluctuations in national life that deserve more than passing attention.” Examples of these “fluctuations” were the Glorietta Mall explosion, the Congress bomb blast, the revelation that governors and congressmen were given half a million pesos each after a meeting with the President in Malacanang, and now, the Makati Peninsula takeover (first it was Oakwood).

As data have shown, despite the 7.3 percent GDP growth in the first half of the year, it is reportedly not enough to make a great difference in the lives of most Filipinos. This was echoed by the Asian Development Bank itself when it noted that economic growth has not grown to a level sufficient to address unemployment, underemployment, and poverty.

Conversely, such a scenario was likewise mentioned by Bishop John Du of the Diocese of Dumaguete in his fiesta homily last Sunday when he said that the city's population accounts for 70 percent who live below poverty line. This was re-echoed by Mayor Perdices during the oath-taking for barangay and SK officials when he challenged them to look beyond infrastructure projects, and focus instead on projects to alleviate poverty. “I know we cannot totally eradicate poverty as it is part of life, but at least we minimize it,” he clarified.

We have not even looked into the so-called “misery index” termed by economists because the rate of inflation is added to the unemployment rate. Prof. Briones said that even with an understated underemployment, the misery index has “progressively risen in recent years” after dropping sharply in 2000 to 15 percent, from its 20 percent peak in the past years.

We can only surmise what people in Metro Manila or other parts of the country may be thinking, but at the end of the day, we don't have to guess who may be in the losing end.