Injustice, hopelessness breed communism!
When someone as young as 11-year-old Marianeth Amper (a sixth grader from Ma-a Central Elementary School in Davao City) dies by hanging herself inside their home because of poverty, it is a tragedy of shocking proportions that ought to jolt the Filipino people into doing something about this problem. Such problems ought to be addressed by those politicians who year after year continue to pillage the nation’s coffers as if it were their own bank accounts! As I wrote just recently, there are no funds for many infrastructure projects anywhere in this country, but there’s lots of money for stealing because stealing it via corruption is a good thing for politicians.
Marianeth only needed a measly P100 for her school project which her father Isabelo, who lost his job as a construction worker, could not give her. But we see on nationwide television and photographs of our political leaders getting bags of P500,000 in cold cash after a meeting in Malacañang – an issue that is still being debated today. Politicians debate, while many people live or die in abject poverty!
Pundits are having a heyday pinning the blame on many sectors, but in my book, Marianeth’s death should be blamed on the Filipino people… as the great words emblazoned on the facade of the
Perhaps the bigger tragedy lies on our pointing the blame at the wrong direction. I have already heard someone say that our poverty is caused by our runaway population growth. That for me is the highest form of baloney! We have poor people because there is not enough money and effort to educate our people, which is why the poor people lose hope, while those fortunate ones who attained a good or even just cursory education end up leaving the country because there are no jobs to be had here at home.
Most pundits insist that poverty drove Marianeth into suicide. While we don’t dispute this, however if they didn’t know, last week Henry Guasin Arain, a 25-year-old worker at the Mactan Export Processing Zone (MEPZ) committed suicide by also hanging himself using a phone cable inside his residence. Mind you, this fellow was not exactly poor as he had a decent job.
Let me point out that if poverty drives people to kill themselves, then we should be hearing of mass suicides in this country from the poor sector. But here is a MEPZ worker who also killed himself over some family squabble. No sir, poverty doesn’t drive people to kill themselves because while millions of Filipinos live below the poverty line, we still see smiles on their faces. What drives people to kill themselves is a sense of hopelessness that there is nothing else that can be done no matter how hard they try.
Aside from hopelessness, there is grave injustice. A week ago I was watching The Correspondents on ANC which showed a special report entitled, Martsa ng Magsasaka or Farmers’ March where last October, 54 Higaonon farmers began their 60-day protest-march from their hometown of Sumilao in Bukidnon to Malacañang to demand the return of the 144-hectare land they said was illegally converted for non-agricultural use.
This march entails these 54 farmers to walk an average of 40 kilometers per day and travel some 1,800 kilometers from Bukidnon, passing through
Injustice forced these farmers on their long march, while hopelessness drove Marianeth to hang herself. Both are the breeding grounds for the communist insurgency. Malacañang ought to rethink its position for these hopeless poor farmers because their cry for injustice is the very same cry that the Filipino nation had 21 years ago at the EDSA Revolt.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo cannot in conscience allow these farmers to go home empty-handed as Malacañang is their last bastion in their hopelessness. They have now walked halfway on their way to
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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” shown every Monday,
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