The Taste Test of an Overcooked Meal

NOTE: This blog is still about the continuing Senate ZTE-NBN probe, of which I found inspiration on food. I hope you enjoy and pass this on to your friends.

There is no exact science on how to taste an overcooked meal. Some may say that it is nothing more but waste and throws it away; while others think that it is still cooked, perhaps just a bit overdone but can still be rectified. In both cases, a decision was made, one decides to work with the overcooked food, while the other decides to throw it altogether.

In our nation’s case, the issue of a shattered bureaucracy is  an overcooked meal – a meal we have been eating since this republic was born. We see the left and right allegations of men and women, groups even, who participates in purchasing deals with the government, with complaints ranging from a pre-arranged bidding to a selective bidding type. We see left and right allegations of people who earn commissions from government projects that range to roadworks to vaccines. We see left and right allegations of a bureaucracy that, to a specific extent, becomes an employment agency of politicians who have fired their souls and consciences when they took their oaths of office. In 1898 until the Commonwealth, these may have been freshly cooked meals, ready to be addressed, but in 2008, this is an overcooked meal, long overdue to be dished and served to the citizenry.

We Filipinos are the chefs of this meal (the bureaucracy being the recipe, corruption in it being the overcooked state of the system).  Our sense of judgment, our assertiveness, and our criticism is the taste test of this meal, graciously cooked for us by this nation’s framers. Elaborated with systems and garnished with nationalism, the 1898 meal was a meal made in heaven,bought with blood and tears. But as years pass, our taste as a nation differs, the chefs change, the recipe not maintained, and the food is overcooked.

My mother cooks; it is her claimed hobby. But my mom almost always ends up with a “PA-CHAM” (pachamba-chamba) meal.  But she doesn’t throw things or rejects things at first glance; she tastes it then checks if it can be remedied. If it can be remedied, she remedies it; otherwise, she rejects it. After all, it depends on her taste test.

Let us do a taste test, then decide.