Tuesday, November 13, 2007 Editorials: Young girl’s act of desperation
TAGALOGS have a saying for the case of Mariannet Amper, who killed herself in Davao City while experiencing poverty: Aanhin pa ang damo kung patay na ang kabayo.
Mariannet’s death caught nationwide attention for many reasons, including its indictment of politicians whose rule has brought this country to heel economically.
That explains President Arroyo’s reaction, from ordering government agencies to help the family Mariannet left behind and expressing a mea culpa for what happened.
The problem with that is that the more help pours to the girl’s family, the more one’s conscience get pricked because the beneficiary is no longer around to savor it.
Normal
In a way, this is but a repetition of the posturing the public saw after the 2001 siege in Malacañang initiated by politicians and participated in by Metro Manila’s poor.
Government, civil society and even the Catholic Church talked about the need to improve the lot of the poor, recognizing what happened as an uprising of the “unwashed.”
More than six years later, and after all the vows have been forgotten and the country is back to “normal,” in comes a suicide that shows nothing much has changed.
Desperation
Some Malacañang people described Mariannet’s act of desperation as an isolated case, perhaps to assuage a guilty conscience—if that still exists in current governance.
But while a child committing suicide because of poverty happens only rarely, what Mariannet experienced is shared by millions of Filipinos, children and old alike.
And while Mariannet chose the path of sacrifice, others resort to a life of crime, which is prompted by the same kind desperation that is now hounding the country’s poor.
Conscience
Of course, not only the government is to blame for what is happening to the millions of Mariannets in our midst because many other sectors should equally share it.
Corruption in government, which saps the capacity of the bureaucracy to serve the people fully and well, has a version in, say, employers exploiting and abusing workers.
Mariannet’s death should therefore prick everybody’s conscience.
