Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, rhyming slogans ang kailangan

This blog's favorite anti-hero is the bureaucrat with the bright idea. Somewhere deep in the recesses of our decaying bureaucracy, fossilized government employees or officers are cooking up wonderful designs and slogans of such caliber as "Sorry for the inconvenient. Your taxes is working for you."

We see this malady not just in bad government posters, vomit-inducing PIA video ads, and what I can only call "high school sloganeering".

As far as the range of my memory can recall (I grew up during Martial Law), Marcos is to blame for this rhyming sickness. Every Martial Law kid still remembers, "Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan."

From then on, I think all slogans had to be "clever," metered and in rhyme -- all three, preferred.

Exhibit A is a slogan circa 1990s on drug abuse. "Don't use drugs. They'll use you, confuse you and abuse you." (This is what I can recall of the slogan for now. Please correct my fading memory!)

Exhibit B. Senator-now-Mayor-again Alfredo Lim made this motto famous. "The law applies to everyone or no one at all." Pretty catchy, but well, on further investigation, it actually is just stating status quo in our country, favoring the second half of the assertion. He could have at least been more cogent with, "I will shoot everyone and ask questions later." -- just kidding, of course.

Exhibit C. For about 2-3 years, MRT played this message as the train stopped on each station. "Thank you for *patronizing* the MetroStar express." They've since changed this message, thank you. Actually, instead of playing this annoying message, it may have been more contingent to simply announce the current stop and the next stop -- twice. But no, our bright government bureaucrat would rather thank people for patronizing the otherwise unbearable ride.

Exhibit D. Pasig City's slogan is the rather emptyheaded "Sige Pasig, Sige Pa!". Sige pa what? More unnecessary bridges across J. Vargas Avenue? More snatchers in broad daylight at Ortigas?

To be fair, we did have our bright moments. I can still remember the "Read to Lead" campaign, which actually pushed me to be a more voracious reader than I already was. And there was this short-lived metric conversion song to start us a-using the metric system.

Things have gone downhill since then.