To get the government moving, be ready to die
HOW do you get the President and the government moving? Answer: Die. Sadly, the lethal path to official attention and action has been repeatedly, if bloodily proven effective several times this year, even with less than three months gone in 2013. From gun control to the Sabah claim and state university policies on unpaid tuition, dying with frontpage and primetime coverage has been the surefire means to get the powers that be bending an ear to the powerless.
In January, politicians and public mourned Stephanie Nicole Ella in Caloocan, felled at the tender age of seven by a bullet fired skyward to usher in 2013. More trigger-happy tragedies followed within a week: Ranilo Nemer, 4, accidentally slain by improvised pistol in Mandaluyong; ten Caviteños massacred on Jan. 4 in a shooting spree; and on Jan. 7, police officers and a reputed jueteng lord were allegedly ambushed in Atimonan, Quezon province, by other law enforcers backed by soldiers. Also in January: the killing of an Isabela mayor and a San Juan businessman, plus a Megamall jewelry robbery. With all that, President Benigno Aquino 3rd ordered a fast Atimonan probe, and legislators dusted off idle gun control bills.
Next issue to get long-absent traction from dead Filipinos is the dormant Sabah claim.
Last month, Sultan Jamalil Kiram 3rd of Sulu, sent 200 of his people, some armed, to Lahad Datu, Sabah, asserting ownership of the oil-rich North Borneo land. He got tired of waiting for an answer to three letters since July 2010, asking the President to push the claim and involve the sultanate in Mindanao peace talks.
Aquino and his spokespersons condemned the incursion and threatened Kiram and his “Royal Sulu Army” with criminal charges. Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda and Cabinet Secretary Rene Almendras cast doubt on the claim, despite Philippine laws asserting it. Their boss floated a purported conspiracy among the sultan and the past administration, supposedly to sabotage the peace process.
Then Kuala Lumpur, with no restraining word from Manila, unleashed planes, tanks and special forces on the Sulu group. More than 60 died, prompting U. N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to call for ceasefire.
With over a hundred Filipinos killed or detained, the Aquino administration reversed and suddenly showed concern for the Sulu group. Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas met with a brother of the sultan, and Philippine officials pressed for access to the incommunicado detainees.
Justice Secretary Leila de Lima got instructions to study the Sabah claim, which the Palace had downplayed for weeks. In the latest turnaround, the Philippines now says it will settle the claim in negotiation or international court. What a difference 60-plus casualties have made.
Sadly, the first- quarter body count didn’t stop there. This month, Kristel Tejada, a University of the Philippines freshman in its Manila campus, took her life after being told to surrender her student card and take a leave of absence from her Behavioral Science course. She couldn’t pay tuition for the second semester.
Kristel and her father, who lost his warehousing job when his firm closed, had vainly pleaded with UP officials for consideration. She had gone to class even if she was never called during attendance check. Finally, on the ides of March, the conscientious and pretty 16-yearold was found dead at home.
That ignited student protests and politician sound bytes against UP, the suspension of its tuition policy, and complaints against its administrators filed with the Ombudsman. UP System President Alfredo Pascual promised reforms to “turn our grief into a stronger resolve to address the concerns brought out by this tragedy.” And congressmen are reportedly amassing a P100 million scholarship fund from their pork barrel funds.
Commenting on the sad episode, columnist Rafael Castillo, a medical doctor, was “concerned that Kristel’s act might be interpreted by our students as an act of great courage or even martyrdom in fighting for a cause, and that they can consider the same option should they be in a similar situation.”
He can say that about countless Filipinos losing patience or hope in the face of official action or inaction. And the state’s scrambling responses to high-profile deaths only buttresses the idea that dying would get it moving. One shudders at what many others keen to force the government’s hand might do, from destitute patients in need of costly treatment, to workers laid off, families going hungry, informal settlers fighting eviction, and landless tenants fearful of losing out when agrarian reform expires in mid-2014.
Castillo urges “schools and universities to focus on proactive in- terventions identifying students at risk and aggressively collaborating with their families on how to help and treat the student.” Good advice, for sure, but it may shift attention away from what is still a key factor in all the deaths cited in this article: the government.
Plainly, if gun laws were properly enforced, if jueteng were not allowed to flourish and corrupt the police, if aggrieved communities were treated with respect (and their letters not ignored), and if mammoth state monies were allocated to those in dire need, then Stephanie, Ranilo, Kristel, and the Atimonan and Sabah victims might have been saved.
Now let’s make sure their deaths lead to real, substantive action, not just headline grabbing quips riding on public sympathy. Already, the push for gun control has been forgotten along with Stephanie et al. President Aquino ordered Atimonan suspects charged, but said nothing about the numbers game they allegedly killed for. Let’s hope the Sabah claim will really be settled, not dribbled away. And hold those congressmen to their P100-million scholarship fund.
Most important of all, may our leaders and government not wait for banner headlines about dead Filipinos before they heed and address the pleas of the people they are supposed to serve.