EDITORIAL - Resilience

The year is closing with about 1,000 corpses unidentified, unclaimed and decomposing in body bags in Tacloban. Thousands are jobless, homeless and mourning for lost loved ones, their future uncertain, in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Yolanda, the magnitude 7.2 earthquake and the three-week siege of Zamboanga City.

There was a lot of bad, tragic news in the year about to pass, which opened with the death of seven-year-old Stephanie Nicole Ella from a stray bullet fired on New Year’s Eve. Her killer is at large. On the Feast of the Three Kings, 13 men were ambushed at a police-military checkpoint in what is believed to be a case of summary execution. A student of the University of the Philippines, forced to stop schooling for failure to pay her tuition, killed herself.

For the administration, there were some pieces of good news: Team P-Noy coasted to a comfortable victory in the May elections, and the country received its first-ever investment grade from all the major international rating agencies. An annex on power sharing was approved by the government with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, although with the sticking points left out.

But bad news dominated much of the year. The public learned how people’s money was misused through the pork barrel system and the wide discretion granted to lawmakers. The Czech ambassador accused the head of the Metro Rail Transit system of trying to extort $30 million from a Czech company. Many months later, the MRT chief is back in office and the case is unresolved. Several journalists were murdered, reinforcing the culture of impunity, and a town mayor and three others were shot dead right outside the NAIA Terminal 3.

The bad news, however, was accompanied by stories that inspired hope. The pork barrel scam opened the doors to reforms that should bring transparency and accountability in the utilization of public funds. The most touching stories came from the disaster areas, as survivors showed admirable spunk and resilience in confronting tragedy. Their stories give the best reason to hope for a better year ahead.