I waited for a taxi outside a railway station this morning. I stood on the narrow pavement which divides the street for busway and the street for other vehicles. A friend came along with me, and with some other people, we stood and waited.
The taxis were full, so we waited a bit. Not far from us, there were two policemen standing. They were doing their job, making sure the traffic was fine, that’s what I thought. Then an empty taxi came, we jumped in quickly.
Suddenly, one of the policeman was in front of our taxi and asked the driver to step aside. What did we do wrong? Well, it turned out that the taxi wasn’t supposed to stop where we were standing. What? We didn’t know we weren’t allowed to stop a taxi there. Both the policemen knew all along that we had been waiting there for a taxi. Why didn’t they tell us in the first place? WHY???
We were both so upset, and pitied the taxi driver. He had to pay some money for the fine because he couldn’t stand the complicated bureaucracy. We all knew that the money would go right into those policemen’s pocket.
I know there are about trillions of stories like this in my country. The corrupted officers in every walk of life. I thought as the country was getting older, the people would be getting wiser, at least people from my generation or younger generation.
But… corruption is in our blood already.
