Last week’s brouhaha over a social media post regarding a VIP convoy that caused a portion of Commonwealth Avenue to be temporarily blocked by the Quezon City police provides an interesting glimpse of how our society perceives “VIPs” and the gargantuan gap between how our police and public officials in general treat the self-declared and confidential VIPs, compared to regular folk like us.
According to a GMA News Online report, the Office of the Vice President on Thursday denied social media posts linking Vice President Sara Duterte to the Commonwealth VIP blockage incident, confirming that the video had indeed gone supernova, because no self-respecting government official would address an issue that hadn’t gone viral on social media.
In the video, a policeman is telling a motorist that the road is closed for a VIP, which was probably misheard by the agitated and frustrated motorist as VP. The link to the VP and the VIP treatment of course was a major factor why the video achieved social media lift off, as Duterte had been a prominent part of the conversation these past few weeks, due to the issue of her need for hundreds of millions in special confidential and intelligence funds.
Anyway, in its statement, the OVP said Sara Duterte was in Mindanao for the World Teacher’s Day celebration and other activities.
“The Vice President did not ask the QCPD and will never ask government agencies, including law enforcement bodies, to carry out actions that would inconvenience the public or cause them harm,” it said.
Not content with denying involvement, the statement dug in further by saying “The viral video is spreading injurious information that is purely grounded in falsity,” and the VP called on the QCPD to conduct an investigation and hold all those responsible accountable for their action, “including the liability of the person who took the video and maliciously appended the traffic stop to the Vice President.”
As the incident had already gone viral, the QCPD Public Information Office apologized for the inconvenience and backed up the VP of course.
As for the poor policeman who starred in the video because either misunderstood or misheard the acronyms VIP and VP, he was put under investigation and will probably face administrative liability for his actions.
Although the QCPD assured the public that the incident will not happen again, it never divulged the identity of the so-called VIP that caused a major thoroughfare to be blocked, inconveniencing motorists enough for 1 guy to take a video that has since gone viral.
Also unclear was what will not happen again. Will a VIP convoy never block a major road again, or will a cop never talk to a motorist who is inquiring the cause of any hold up again?
Anyway, not content with putting the videoed cop under investigation, the police even went on to hunt down the video uploader who put the VP in a bad light.
According to news reports, the cops are now eyeing the filing of a criminal case against the uploader, apparently eyeing a cybercrime complaint. It’s not clear what his crime actually is, but from the looks of it, he simply messed with the wrong VIP, embarrassed the QCPD, and forced the OVP to issue a statement denying involvement, basically raising the BP of a couple of VIPs, which should be enough to warrant a criminal case in this country that prioritizes VIPs over everyone else.
What is most annoying about this VIP-centric mentality of our public officials is that a traffic cop has been relieved from his post and under investigation for possible administrative liabilities, the alleged uploader has been threatened with a criminal case, and yet the root cause, the VIP that caused the road to be blocked, the video uploaded, and Duterte dragged into their mess, has still not been identified by the QCPD. It is looking like that person must be one helluva VIP who truly needs to have all the roads of the country blocked and closed for their convenience whenever they pass by.
The way our cops and public officials treat VIPs, along with how they expect to be treated, is an indication of how different everything is for those who can call themselves such and for those of us who are not. If they do not have to experience traffic, or queue up, they probably know they do not have to pay taxes or follow most laws.
If the QCPD can sack a cop and threaten the persecution of a citizen because a couple of VIPs were slighted, then it is clear as day that ordinary Filipinos are truly second, or maybe even third or fourth class citizens in their country who shouldn’t even consider questioning a cop on who or what is causing any inconvenience in our dreary lives.
If there is any lesson to be learned from this latest episode of power dynamics in this country, it is that we shouldn’t mess with the self-proclaimed VIPs of this country who are the priority of our own government and public officials. This is the world we chose when we used our democracy to pick our leaders so we deserve everything we get. Let’s just suck it up.*
