Lawlessness creeps in

Batas Mauricio /

ONE thing that President Duterte and other responsible ranking officials of his government should pay attention to is the evident lawlessness that has crept into the consciousness of many Filipinos, young and old alike, in almost all areas of the country nowadays.

This must be checked and, by all means, prevented from becoming the norm for our citizenry lest we turn our country into the modern “wild, wild, West” of the old American frontier, where there is no rule of law and no respect for authority among many.

I am saying this because of two incidents that affected me somehow in just a span of one or two weeks, happening about 150 or so kilometers apart, and proving to me that there is an unmistakable breakdown of law and order which is going to get worse before it becomes any better.

The first one pertains to the kidnapping of a grandson of a lady pastor of the Simbahang Anak ng Diyos Kadugo Ni Kristo which I already reported here.

I was given an update on the kidnapping by the lady preacher’s daughter, the widowed mother of the 12-year old boy who was snatched away right under her very nose while they were already on their way home from school.

The boy’s mother told me that, from the bits and pieces that her son managed to give her during the times he mustered enough courage to talk about his ordeal, the kidnappers who numbered three in all were just slightly older than the boy. There are more of this in our next column, but what struck me the hardest here was the fact that the kidnappers were also mere children. What has happened to them?

Then, just a few hours before I wrote this column, I personally witnessed the behavior of about six to seven very young teenagers, one of whom a teen-aged girl, who must have thought they were the kings and queens along the national highway, so that they thought they could park at any part of the road and would not want to move one bit even if they were already obstructing other motorists.

The driver of my car was already signaling that we be allowed to pass through the clear obstruction posed by the teenagers who were then driving four motorcycles, as we already finished eating our lunch along the highway, but the teenagers did not even mind us at all. We were able to go on only after they have driven off themselves.

Where are our youth getting this unruly and rebellious kind of attitude? They are exceedingly young to be exhibiting the toughness usually associated with hardened criminals, but, there they were, kidnapping their fellow children, and acting as bad as any hooligan could ever act. Indeed, what is happening to our country, Mr. President?

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com