Too many ''killings'' cause too much anxieties

Today, many Filipinos are worried and anxious over too many killings by men riding in tandem on motorcycles who hide their faces with hoods or helmets. Judges in Butuan, businessmen and journalists in Manila, city councilors in SM South Mall, beauty title holders in Bulacan, students in Laguna, farmers in Nueva Ecija. People are gripped by fear for their fathers, mothers, children, and siblings who are out for work, school, business or social functions. There are rumors of ''extrajudicial killings'' and summary executions. While it is unfair and purely conjectural to attribute these murders to the government alone, we still hold the government responsible for failing to defend and protect the victims from unknown killers or mysterious assassins.

But we are not discussing murders, homicides, and assassinations now. Let us rather talk about another kind of ''killings'', also being attributed to the government. First of all, the systematic ''killing'' of the manpower agencies and service contractors (despite being licensed and sufficiently capitalized). DOLE and its inspectors keep knocking at the doors of factories, offices and manufacturing plants, inspecting payrolls and books of accounts, questioning workers and managers, and, at the end of the day, putting a mark of shame and condemnation on the company, by declaring it a labor-only contractor. Even after just an anonymous message, DOLE comes to judge the living and ''dead'' firms. This is double murder. Then, the principal employers are compelled to regularize contractuals, thereby driving away foreign investors, and "killing" the goose that lays the golden egg.

Another kind of ''killing'' is the new law on free tuition fee in state universities and colleges. Private institutions shall lose more than half of their enrollment as the students, even the rich and the middle class, in addition to the poor and very poor, are most likely going to troop to UP, Cebu Normal University, and other SUCs. The teachers from private schools have already transferred to the public due to superior salaries and benefits. Senator Pacquiao is delivering the knockout punch by making it criminal for schools to require tuition and permits as prerequisite to taking exams. Then the hospitals are also being ' killed'' by criminalizing the imposition of deposits and advanced payments prior to treatment.

The softdrinks companies are also being ''killed'' by over taxation because they cause diabetes. (Why don't they also ''kill'' the fast food companies for the same reason?) They are ''killing'' the cigars and cigarettes companies by making the whole Philippines a 'No Smoking' area (in public places). They are likewise ''killing'' the whole tobacco industry in Ilocos. They are killing the mining industry and the logging industry (perhaps, they really deserve killing for having killed our natural environment). Thus, in the Philippines today, ''killing'' has become natural. But the ''hoi polloi'' and the silent majority are suffering agony and silent pain. When will all these ''killings'' end?