Last week, as hundreds of thousand Filipino commuters went through the daily ordeal of falling in line for up to an hour to ride the MRT because buses are more expensive, slower, and often as jampacked, the President’s spokesperson said something like: "They can’t ride the trains? Let them “discover other options,” like the bus, or something." That the President’s alter ego, a seasoned spin doctor whose job is precisely to gauge the public mood, really seemed to have no idea of just how out of line he was tells us a lot about why our public transport system is so—pardon my French—f*cked up.