Typhoon Tino’s howling winds and inexorable floods spoke a message one can only hope we all understood and took to heart. It is not looking like we learned anything from Odette. It is, therefore, hoped that Tino will not have to speak louder than it already has before we get the message right and act on it.
Many of those who lost their homes and died in the flood cannot be blamed for putting themselves in harm’s way. Why live dangerously by a river if you could afford a house somewhere safe? Tino is, therefore, telling politicians to provide a budget for housing for the poor in secure and safe relocation sites. Tino is telling the government to shed its incompetence and provide people with basic social services, chief of which is housing.
Tino is also telling DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways) officials and contractors to accept accountability for the huge loss of lives and property that, in a good number of cases, was due to ghost and/or substandard flood control structures.
Yet, while survivors look for a place to stay, top politicians, DPWH officials and contractors are comfortable in their palatial houses in gated subdivisions. While survivors worry about what to wear, where to get water and what to eat, they have their wardrobes filled with expensive clothes, and their freezers and refrigerators filled with food and cold water.
This only goes to show that Tino cannot touch these criminals physically. Tino can only call out their consciences and make them accept responsibility. It is instead the job of all concerned citizens to hold negligent and greedy officials and their accomplices accountable in a court of law and punish them for their crimes. In addition, they must be made to restitute in full what they stole.
The whole situation grates against our being a Christian nation. Christianity is about love and justice; yet we have a political system that is unjust to many by giving the most benefits of our economy to a few. We also have the dominant Catholic Church promoting a devotional religion that cares only for the soul and is not acting like the antibody it is supposed to be of a spiritually and physically sick society.
The whole situation also grates against our being a rich nation. We are rich, very, in natural resources but half the population is poor. The reason: mismanagement. Greedy political and economic leaders systemically grab for themselves the bigger slice of our economic pie. They unilaterally decide how much those below them get. And the latter get very little because the former decide not on the basis of Christian justice and charity but on the greed and political expediency of a neoliberal economic system.
Tino reminds us that when nature is angry enough, it can easily wipe us off the face of the earth. Tino’s ultimate message, therefore, is that we take care of one another as brothers and sisters and together take care of Mother Earth. The community’s response to the calamity has so far been admirable, solid proof that we can do it and take care of one another. It’s a matter of not waiting for a calamity to happen but doing it under the normal conditions of daily life.