State of the Nation

The real state of the nation began to unfold during the days after Ms. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo delivered her SONA (state of the nation address) last 24 July. The well-scripted SONA ended after the well-scripted 166 sets of claps reverberated at the four walls of the Batasan Complex.

The real state of the nation was revealed in the way our government leadership responded to the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. While other countries had already rescued their people, we heard our president on TV appealing to the Israeli government to ensure that our overseas Filipino workers would be out of harm’s way as the Israeli Army fired its missiles on Lebanon. As if Israel’s bombs would be kind enough to spare our migrant workers. We clearly saw on TV how the bombs had snuffed out the lives of even innocent children and their parents who had nothing to do with the conflict.

Through the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, we came to learn about how government allegedly misused millions of OWWA funds during the last elections. Like the GSIS and SSS funds, government should not dip its fingers into the OWWA cookie jar, which belongs to overseas Filipino workers. As a country that exports its brain and brawn overseas, the Philippines should set aside emergency funds for its foreign embassies to spend when tragedies such as the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict occur.

Thanks to the noise of the Senate, which sought to probe whatever happened to the OWWA funds and why the administration didn’t immediately send a single cent to the embassy in Lebanon. It was only then that our officialdom began acting to really bring home on chartered planes our troubled brothers and sisters in the Middle East.

That some Filipinos opted to stay in Lebanon despite the war also shows the real state of the nation. These Filipinos would rather take the risks in troubled Lebanon rather than go home to the Philippines and die of hunger and poverty. This, despite Ms Arroyo’s claims in her July 24 SONA of a rosy Philippine economy and of a country with less poverty.

The nation under Arroyo also revealed its real state in the continuing breakdown of the rule of law. Sadly, Ms Arroyo’s envisioned “super regions” are turning out to be fields for the extra-judicial killings of government’s perceived enemies such as social activists and critical journalists.

We thought extrajudicial killings and disappearances were facts of life only under the former strongman Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law regime. But reports now say extrajudicial killings happen almost daily, a trend which both domestic and international human rights watch groups say should not be happening in a supposed democratic nation committed to the rule of law.

Dr. Constancio “Chandu” Claver, a medical doctor, opted to serve his people in Kalinga rather than join the legions of doctors and nurses who seek overseas jobs abroad. But serving his people proved dangerous to his health because he happens to be connected with the Bayan Muna, a militant organization perceived by government as among the fronts of the underground Left.

Bayan Muna’s leaders apparently have been marked for death and Claver, who is well-loved by his people in Kalinga because of his services as a doctor, was not spared. Claver is now fighting for his life due to wounds from armalite bullets but he lost his wife, Alice, during an early morning ambush last July 31, which also injured a bystander and left his daughter dazed and traumatized.

The killings continue. As we write this column, reports say a farmer leader was also killed in Albay. Even while we are already mellowing with age, we continue to ask the question Bob Dylan has been asking since the 1970s: “How many deaths will it take till they know that too many people had died?” The problem is that the answer, as Dylan has said, is blowing in the wind.

The killings are unnecessary in this country, which just abolished the death penalty. Unfortunately, killings are now part of the current real state of this country of our hopes and sorrows.