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Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Malilong: Mendicancy
By Frank Malilong Jr.
The Other Side
I must concede that she had a point. There is a law prohibiting mendicancy.
On June 11, 1978, the dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, issued Presidential Decree (PD) 1563 “for the control and eradication of mendicancy.” But even before that, Cebu City already penalized begging through Ordinance 303, which was passed on Sept. 29, 1969. The ordinance has since been amended twice, the last one on April 21, 2004.
In both the national and the local measures, reference was made to the need to protect the mendicant from indignity and degradation. The City Council also said that mendicancy is a public nuisance that has to be regulated.
Both measures punish not only the alms taker but also the giver. But while the national law penalizes only the giving of alms on roads and other public places, the city ordinance does not make any distinction. So if a beggar knocks on your door and you give him your dinner leftover, you are liable to pay a fine of P1,000 or render four hours community service under the supervision of the Cebu City Traffic Operations Management.
That was the risk the young man took when he shared his fried banana with the old woman at the skywalk. I was the law-abiding one because I chose not to see her. He broke the law because he did not want her to starve. Is it really that simple?
A friend, Bert Sanchez, wrote from Bratislava about the same moral dilemma he encountered in that Slovakian capital recently. “Here in Slovakia, begging is abhorred because most panhandlers are alcoholics, looking for cash to buy their next bottle of booze.” But when he saw an old woman “on her knees with her right palm up, her lips moving as if in prayer” under one of the medieval arches that surround Bratislava, Bert’s heart melted.
“She could have been somebody’s mother or grandmother,” he wrote. Ignoring the legal consequences, Bert fished a bill from his wallet and gave it to her. He said his heart felt light afterwards.
“We should learn a lesson from the messenger-looking guy,” my daughter Lei, wrote from Warsaw. “We tend to spend so much time worrying about the ‘bigger problems’ that sometimes, we don’t even notice anymore our brothers and sisters in the streets, who would be happy if we did something as simple as sharing a fried banana.”
“What made it remarkable,” said Fr. Jack Serate, a Franciscan missionary writing from Japan, “was that the man was also poor like her. I cannot call that man a ‘true Christian’ because he might be a Muslim or an atheist but I’m sure he had a good and pure heart.”
Fr. Serate said that he, too, had, many times in the past, been blind to the needs of others. “We should open our eyes to the world around us to see Christ and help heal our wounded world.”
It has been almost 30 years since PD 1563 but when you open your eyes to the world around you, you still see the mendicancy that the law promised to eradicate.
Surely, this is neither the alms giver nor the taker’s fault, is it?
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (July 4, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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