EDITORIAL – Ka Bel

Partylist Rep. Crispin Beltran died when he accidentally fell from the roof of his unfinished house, to which the 75-year-old had clambered up to do some repairs before the rains of the country's notorious rainy season start falling with a vengeance.

Many may find Beltran pesky on account of his leftist advocacies, of which his manner of pursuing them sometimes rubs people, with whom he does not see eye to eye, the wrong way. But that is probably as far as any antagonism, if ever, against the man would go.

The day after his death, pictures appearing in the newspapers showed how the man had lived, and it was very clear from the photographic evidence that he truly lived his pro-poor advocacies himself.

Anybody who sees his house will never ever believe that in it lived a congressman. So many more people clearly lived under far better surroundings than he did. And his wife — no offense meant — certainly did not look like all the other congressmen's wives.

The guy run a sari-sari store in front of his house, for God's sake, and in his spare time, when the wife was doing the laundry, would do the selling himself --- two sticks of cigarettes here, a packet of salt there.

Not that we expect Beltran to be rich because he never was. The normal expectation, however, was to see some modest changes in his lifestyle, considering the perks that come the way of congressmen.

At the very least, one would have expected a slightly better house than what the newspapers published, and the wife to look, well, a little bit more “wifey” according to our preconceived notions of what spouses of government officials looked like.

It is unfortunate that most impressions of Beltran would change only after his death, and only because the photographs finally showed how he lived. And because we were among those who misappreciated him, we say belatedly sorry. May you rest in peace, “Ka Bel.”