IT’S been one week since the Kidapawan massacre happened. Three lives were lost from shots fired by police dispersing protesting farmers. Seventy-nine people were rounded up, including three pregnant women, three elderly, and other passersby on accusations that they attacked police with sticks and rocks.
And where is the president in all this?
Nothing has been heard or seen from him in all this chaos and garrison atmosphere in Kidapawan, North Cotabato the past week.
Nothing has been done by President Aquino or his agriculture secretary or his standard bearer the Yolanda superhero Mar Roxas to alleviate the hunger of 6,000 protesting farmers and their demand for 15,000 sacks of rice.
Not one single rice has come out of a government NFA warehouse, or from the provincial LGU to help stave off hunger. The only rice subsidies that came to the North Cotabato folks came from netizens here in Davao and elsewhere, and from celebrities Robin Padilla, Angel Locsin, sisters Anne and Jasmine Curtis and others.
The only thing this Daang Matuwid government has done is to lay blame. Blame leftists for provoking farmers to stage a barricade. Blame Duterte for turning this to an election issue. Mar Roxas asks who is funding the protesting farmers, while he has turned Department of Agriculture and DSWD affairs into a campaign event. Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said the food crisis is not that bad as the leftists wants to score propaganda. The Liberal Party’s local minion, North Cotabato Governor Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, and her police chief Senior Supt. Alex Tagum blames outsiders for infiltrating in the farmers.
The more these government officials, police and their lapdogs/ minions including pseudo-activists Akbayan try to find someone to blame, the more it makes them look stupid, heartless and fake.
This just shows how Aquino’s Daang Matuwid is about. Their inability to handle crisis and calamities.
It happened in Sendong, Pablo and Yolanda. People waited in agony amidst the rubble of washed out homes and toppled crops. Where was the help, the relocation houses, the food relief? You see photo-ops of officials smiling wide receiving help from international donors yet later you find the unthinkable pile of rotten food donations buried or left to rot.
You see that again in North Cotabato. There is a provincial calamity fund of P 14 million and another P321 million which can be sourced from the national budget, that’s according to Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares. Yet Gov. Mendoza’s defense of her calamity fund was that this was used for cloud seeding, growing drought-resistant food and setting up of bigasan ng bayan. But even that could not bring down rain or food. Why hasn’t the national government act on this calamity soon when they knew this will happen since last year? Who’s in charge?
The tragedy during calamities and crisis is not how helpless victims are.
No, survivors are rather resilient, plus our compassion to reach out helps everyone rise above storms and drought.
The real tragedy, rather, is this government’s ineptitude to give even basic needs such as food and shelter.
Daang Matuwid is nothing but a disaster that has to end soon in its own abyss.
tyvelez@gmail.com