Uniform

When asked for his ticket, the man seated beside me loosely waived his left hand in the air. Asked by the ticket inspector for the second time, the same man answered, “I am a policeman.” Showing no emotion to such a declaration, the inspector proceeded to checking the next passenger’s fare tickets. Me, on the hand, had a different reaction, albeit it was all inside me. Hearing the policeman’s confident announcement, I can’t help but feel two distinct emotions.

The first one was fear. Growing here in our country, I imbibed this instinctive fear that our society normally endures when faced with their kind. This shouldn’t be the case. They are meant to protect us. Instead, we are trying to protect ourselves from them. We have become accustomed to hearing about corrupt and perverted versions of this group whose members were meant to serve the people. That is why, even when in a foreign land and I see those who are in uniform, I make it a point that there is a certain distance between us.

Revolt was the next thing I felt. How did carrying such an appellation ever mean that you get free rides on a public transportation? How can anyone trained to be in a uniform declare without shame that he is demanding as a right a service that must be paid? Pity, he was even carrying a hard-bound copy of the Local Government Code of the Philippines.

On the other hand, I have to lodge my own defense for them. They are underpaid and overworked (those who really work, anyway). The challenges they face are not rightly remunerated. Many of them have to live in squatter areas for lack of enough money to stay in pleasant neighbourhoods. Thus, I read somewhere, they absorb the culture of criminality of such locality.

I do not like hearing and seeing such wrongful practice. I hope I won’t be a witness of another one. I prefer to think, even if only on my perfect world, that they are in fact the models of our society.