After a long hiatus, Little Voices is back. I am grateful to Irma Faith Pal for not giving up on me. I wish I was more prolific with the written word, just like Ian Rosales Casocot, whose column I look forward to every Sunday. But I consider myself an ordinary person who is more comfortable with the spoken word, and who writes in such a simplistic manner that I sometimes wonder it sees print in this weekly paper.
But these children’s stories have to be told. And so I write again, hoping to give our children a voice, and improve my writing ability in the process. Thank you, MetroPost, for your constant faith and trust.
I read in the Jan. 9 news about the P1.8 million bonus that Sen. Juan Ponce-Enrile had given to 18 members of the Senate. The money, which came up to a total of P30 million, came from the funds that was allocated for the Senate post of President Noynoy Aquino, who became President in 2010. The Senate President had the option of returning it to the nation’s treasury; it was, however, distributed to the 18 lucky ones who had been “nice” in 2012.
Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. says, “There was nothing irregular about it.” Yes, everything was legal; giving away “cash gifts” to our lawmakers for maintenance & operating expenses (MOE) has been a regular practice. Whether this was “unconscionable and unconstitutional”, as one Senator puts it, is not for me to say.
Indeed, all these words have taken on a different meaning, depending on who is using them. Besides, in these days of blatant political maneuvering, they have, I think, lost their weight and their sting.
However, the baffling question that comes to mind is: How many P162,000s are there in P1,800,000?
Kevin was eight years old when he was diagnosed with leukemia in June last year. The son of a construction worker and a housewife in one of the mountain barangays in Negros Oriental, his mother had to scrape around for money whenever he had to be brought to Dumaguete for his blood transfusions, a temporary stop-gap measure that had kept him alive for a while. Chemotherapy would cost P162,000, a huge amount that was impossible to raise for a family of six, with a daily income of about P200. Yet, the mother, Jocelyn, was hopeful.
Kevin had blood transfusion sometime in November. Less than a month later, just before Christmas, Kevin was dead. His last wish? “Dad-a lagi ko ug hospital, Ma!”
During the funeral, with the little boy’s body placed in an oversized government-donated coffin, the mother’s wailings were punctuated with the words: “Pasaylo-a ko, Vin, kay wa na ko nahatag imong gusto!”
The feeling of guilt was almost palpable in the air. The little boy’s wish to live longer was not fulfilled; the family had no money left.
So how many P162,000s are there in P1,800,000?
And how many P1,500s — payment for testing of donated blood — are there in P1,800,000?
But we always blame the poor for their poorness. They are lazy, they have many children…In Kevin’s case, cancer is incurable, and the boy would have died anyway.
And so life continues. The lucky Senators who received their bonuses maybe did share some of it with the poor…several kilos of rice, maybe several cans of sardines, noodles, a party for some barangays, a housing project, assistance for the victims of recent calamities; for his own family: new jewelry for the wife, new or several cars for the children, a trip abroad. There is nothing irregular about it; it was legal. After all, they are Senators.
In the meantime, more children, most of them from poor families, will continue to die, not only from seemingly incurable diseases such as cancer, kidney disease, and heart problems, but also from pneumonia, TB, and even diarrhea.
Lack of money for hospitalization, medicines, even for transportation to go see a doctor, especially if the services of a specialist are needed…these are only some of the problems that these families are confronted with every day of their lives.
I have friends who tell me about buying only some, not all, of the prescribed medicines because “Wala na mi kwarta.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd US President, said, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
Now go tell that to the Philippine Senate.
