Hunger but not games

With Filipinos apparently giving more interest in following updates on the Raymart Santiago-Ramon Tulfo public dogfight than that of the more pressing issues our country is facing, I can say here again is our teleserye obsession. We just love to be entertained.

Thing is, our senses have been predominantly bombarded with all this showbiz drama over the week that we missed to pay attention to heavier, more relevant news details. Allow me to say, for example, that while people flooded on YouTube to get the first ticket to the Santiago-Tulfo duel, nobody seemed to care about the results of the latest nationwide survey fielded by the Social Weather Stations.

It said hunger claims have risen in tandem with poverty, with a record-high number of Filipino families saying they experienced having nothing to eat. And this just edged out and broke the GMA administration’s data in December 2008. Okay, at this point, you may have lost the interest in reading (because you thought this was going to be a review of that unscheduled NAIA fight) but as we speak today, over five million families are actually living through an involuntary hunger ordeal.

These hunger findings, a report noted, followed the SWS’ release last week of its self-rated poverty survey where 55 percent of the respondents, equivalent to an estimated 11.1 million families, claimed to be poor, a 10-point jump to the highest result so far for the Aquino administration.

In short, simple terms, more and more are getting hungry and at the same time, poor—and this situation occurring within a government that has a net satisfaction rating of 49 percent? Quite an irony there.I don’t know if something’s wrong with these figures but since all these surveys were carried out by the same polling body, SWS, then it’s safe to conclude the 23.8 and 55 percent results are as dependable as the 49 percent mark.

And even Malacañang believed so. Only that it asserted the new hunger rates were caused primarily by the recent calamities that struck the country. In my notes, I will mark that as the lamest reason they can ever come up with. I mean, yes their wit was commendable when they have placed the blame over Sendong or Pedring and not on Aquino or his instrumentalities. Why? Did we miss typhoons in 2008? And I thought Ondoy, the worst in recent memory, sickened us in 2009?

Instead of discrediting other people or those forces beyond their control like typhoons, the Aquino administration should accept the fact that the programs that are aligned to alleviate hunger and poverty in our country are not living up to their missions. They should stop trying to create an image of their administration as perfect and flawless. Rather, they have to embrace the idea that things cannot always go right, that things just screw up at some point. From there, just start anew and learn the lessons.That simple.

But then again, with their rating pegged at 49 percent which is considered ‘good’, I don’t think this government will ever have the balls to concede in public and accept its blunders. Else, it will face a whole nation of humiliation, a nation that has rested upon its shoulders so much trust and confidence in the first place.

Still, I think the upshots are now slowly showing up. Earlier, we’ve seen a dip in the satisfaction ratings. And now, these escalating hunger and poverty levels are distressing us more than ever. So as days go by, it becomes quite clear that we’re not actually living in the promised straight path but in that same old, hungry, poor country where we’ve always used to.

Which I guess explains why Filipinos divert their attention to teleseryes. In fact, that’s maybe why they love teleseryes. That’s why they like to hear more about how Claudine’s leg is doing. They’re just so hungry and poor, and need entertainment to feed their mouths.