Seriously apply existing laws punishing corrupt for ‘cruelty to young Filipinos’
AHORRIBLE scene. On national TV, young women are shown stomping to death a helpless puppy. It seems like the “crush video” wants to give viewers the impression that the girls are enjoying the act.
The news footage immediately makes one’s stomach churn. Not only does it show cruelty. It also raises more disturbing questions like how the youth are being conditioned to accept violence as fun, and how they are encouraged and molded to engage in the torture and killing of hapless creatures.
A touching, albeit heart-wrenching, scene was captured in a front-page photo in the Oct. 1 INQUIRER issue. In a remote village in Bulacan, a Grade 5 school boy risks life and limb as he crosses a rampaging river on a “steel cable-bridge” to reach his school. The young boy balances with his slippers and backpack, with arms stretched and hands clutching a cable line above him. It is not a fun-filled circus show. It is an infuriating scene that leaves one asking: “Where is the serious budget planning for the education of the youth? What kind of society is this that is so blind and numb to the needs of the little ones? Why are the PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund), DAP (Disbursement Acceleration Program) and pork barrel kings and queens so rapt with their sense of entitlement to public funds, even as a humble school boy risks life and limb, his present and future, just to go to school?”
This is not just about parental responsibility. A caring society should provide a system or mechanism where everyone has equal access to social services and resources. Institutions like media, education centers, and faith establishments must work together to guide the youth toward a better understanding of science, math and literature and, of course, toward imbibing proper values, good manners and the right conduct in relating not only with their fellow human beings but also with animals and plants and thewhole creation.
A law has been passed prescribing harsher punishment for the cruel treatment of animals. But has there been serious and earnest implementation of the laws that make liable lawmakers, government officials and their cohorts who, by their corruption, rob the young of their future? Why can’t such laws be implemented? Impunity begins with a system or structure that promotes neither justice nor righteousness.