Crime and Impoverishment

KISS AND MAKE UP Imelda and Gloria

At the height of Meriam Defensor-Santiago’s political career in the late 90s, the Senator was a perennial speaker in practically every gathering in the country, whether it be political or plain launching of a new office, her appearance being the noblesse oblige of the event since, at that time, even the words that come out of her mouth exude an aura of prestige, power and printable material.

I was, to some extent, one of the privileged few to have witnessed her all-consuming personality in one of those gatherings at the Royal Mandaya Hotel in Davao City several years ago, when she was asked to deliver a key note address about, of all topics, the implications of too much politicking in the present state of the environment. And true to her Ilongga roots, her entrance was anything but trite; her handshake was so loaded with delicacy, ‘though less imeldific, but with a gripping sincerity that only an established public servant is capable of doing.

Somehow the parameters of the fabulous event went nowhere inside my memory after all these years except, of course, the European-style dinner which was served with intense care, as caring as the intonation of an Ilongga tongue, but the only thing that stuck inside my mind, and still beating at the corners of my ears, was a phrase the Senator uttered as part of the challenge to would-be leaders of the nation, the phrase, “The reason you are poor is because you have not committed a great crime.”

That phrase, although glibly delivered by that oftentimes eccentric Senator, still tolls a morbid bell to the social structure of the nation. It bespeaks the kind of mentality we have in trying to get by with life, a Machiavellian position that longs to intensify the already battered political system of the country, so battered that the environment is, again, placed as an extensive coffin to that garlic-eating social commentary. A commentary that was quite visible at the very face of the Senator, as she surveyed us after releasing that shrewd phrase with self-assured eyes and a composed smile that can be construed as what it intended to be.

Last summer, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte was at sour odds with the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), after the Commission found out certain loopholes and neglect on the part of the local government in containing, if not eradicating, human rights violations through its alleged summary killings in the city. The investigation somehow altered the image of Davao City such that it slightly sustained a crack in its already booming commercial industry. But the blatancy of killing a person, according to the silent, condoning populace of the city, was slowly perceived as just a matter of choosing the lesser evil, since some of the victims, attested further by witnesses, were menaces to society.

A killing by any other name is still a killing, no matter how many heads the guilty party would take to his canary. But what concerns me, in line with what Meriam elucidated in the ancient past, is not the summary execution of human lives, but the executing summarily of the environment and pocketing all the gains afterwards. This is an execution that continues to plunder the banana plantations in the plains of Davao del Norte up to the utmost wilds of the Surigao rainforests.

I had a vicarious experience, well, sort of, about the effects of “toxic shower” when I had this interview for a job application as a Media Advocacy Specialist of a non-government agency who specializes in championing the rights of those who were directly affected by these unrelenting aerial sprayings on banana farms. And after seeing an album of pictures about aerial spraying effects, most notably the chemical Mancozeb, such as skin cancer, severe goiter, thyroid gland enlargement, blindness, internal infections and even the contamination of potable drinking water, much of what they say about enhancing the growth and sumptuousness of these bananas were completely obliterated, and only those behind the operation is getting their money’s worth. “The reason you are poor is because you have not committed a great crime.”

Last May, in one of my short, occasional vacations in Port Lamon, one of the coastal towns of Surigao del Sur, I had a rare chance to witness, on the road, a portion of the Surigao jungle that has undergone a kaingin operation. According to the regulars of the jungle, this literal burning of forest trees in that wild Kamayo terrain has, over a sporadic period, found a searing niche in the region, since some of the persons involved in that environmental arson has accumulated enough monetary gains at the expense of the forest and the residents living in those woods. This is much more subtle, much smoother, and much more silent than the liquidation of those pushers, thieves and reporters. This is the environment and the residents thereafter. “The reason you are poor is because you have not committed a great crime.”

An inconsequential resident of Mindanao is now so faced with an unreal adversity that it is almost impossible to maintain that positive attitude, that renewable faith in our government, that time-honored code of doing something for the welfare of the many, when instances of trickery and greed still dictate the inner workings of our fiscal and social structures. Maybe it is safe to say that Meriam Defensor-Santiago was contending with the fullness of her heart, and that it only became apparent after she actually uttered it in full view of dinner guests. Or she may well be speaking for everybody, or to the political community she represented, that it was more like a reiteration than an observation on her part. “The reason you are poor is because you have not committed a great crime.”

At times it feels like a losing battle to focus so much attention on the things that continue to haunt you being a loser. But I don’t think that this vast, poor, struggling majority is a losing lot at all; they may be pressured, paranoid in some instances, or even pushed to the limit by both its direct neighbor and the president of the country, yet all they need is just a minor, if not a steady, representation in the forming of those policies in which they are, most of the time, recipients of those same well-intentioned monologues that would enable them to act. “The reason you are poor is because you have not committed a great crime.”

If you can actually count your money you are not really a rich man. Common sense dictates that the only reason for us to really make it to the big stage is for us to shamelessly steal the spotlight and thereby rise to the top of the billing, no matter what. We may become, in the end, a nation obsessed with the idea of intensifying our need, instead of delimiting our greed. And how unfeeling it is to say, after pondering on what Meriam said a long time ago, and see the realness of her mocking the established order that the only reason your poverty is great is because you have been very poor in your crime.

That, to me, is such a tasteless prayer in a dinner.