FRED C. LUMBA SPECKS OF LIFE HOSTAGING THE GOVERNMENT

and capability to buy new vehicles.

Prior to PBBM’s nerve-calming intercession, the protesting transport groups aired their dislike for the DOTr’s “sweeping” decision that all public conveyances, particularly the jeepney operators/drivers, join a transport cooperative so that all concerned individuals can pool their resources together and work unitedly as one.

A cooperative, in this sense, is like a private corporation that is run by the members themselves with no government intervention in its internal affairs. (But in cooperatives, membership is voluntary.)

While the majority of the transport orgnizations have agreed to form themselves into cooperatives and were already operating as such, published news reports however said two transport blocs (MANIBELA and PISTON) expressed their protest and resistance to the modernization program because their members could not afford the hefty funding requirements and conditions.

The DOTr, initially, stood its ground but the protesters threatened to launch a nation-wide jeepney strike to paralyze the transport system.

In the final analysis, the general commuting public was adversely affected, to the gfreat discomfort and exasperation of poor daily wage earners.

Although aware of these consequences, the striking jeepney drivers, who also lost daily earnings that provide food on the table, obeyed the decision taken by their officers.

You can see that the government bent its stance backward because PBBM did not want the general populace to suffer.

In a Third World country that relies mostly on public conveyance, the mass base of the people unavoidably becomes fodder that feeds social unrest if the situation is not promptly quelled.

Of course, this proletarian tactic has been the methodical approach taught and employed by Karl Marx, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro, Che Guevarra and their ilk who favored socialism over the western world’s democratic system.

Ranged against the long-time practice of the “boundary” system, the transport cooperative program - if run effectively transparent and efficiently managed - will assure the individual members of financial growth and regular source of income.

I believe that, over the years, the national government has studied the program with scholarly applied knowledge and practical analyses.

They would not have missed the Israel kibbutz experience and time will expertly tell why the cooperative system in a third World country will row and prosper.

Training seminars as well as educational trips in an exchange program with countries that have proven success in cooperatives should be a regular menu in cooperatives development.

Politics is a no-no. Once it rears its ugly head in the moveement, members should immediately chop it off like a beastly