‘Those who will selflessly re-channel their campaign resources to the people’s emergency needs at the expense of other major regions requiring large campaign funds will certainly stand out during the elections.’
KNOWING Sen. Manny Pacquiao’s unrequited generosity and genuine heart for people in need does not qualify him for calamity politics, to get together with the rest of the presidential aspirants in helping super typhoon Odette’s victims in the Visayas and Mindanao.
The massive devastation affecting eight regions and incalculable damage to crops, private property, public infrastructure and entire towns and cities should make Sen. Ping Lacson ignore what he thinks to be Pacquiao’s ploy to play politics.
Suddenly, the political activities and campaign plans are altered in the aftermath of the catastrophe staring straight at the faces of the presidential aspirants.
Lacson seems to downplay the huge tragedy that to him has necessitated coordinated work with the local governments and, unlike Pacquiao’s, away from the media glare. A crucial factor will be how the aspirants respond in bringing abundant assistance to the hapless victims and in rebuilding their lives.
Those who will selflessly re-channel their campaign resources to the people’s emergency needs at the expense of other major regions requiring large campaign funds will certainly stand out during the elections.
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The truly selfless and stout-hearted among us will be compelled by grief and deep empathy to abandon their Christmas reunions and holiday gatherings to instead favor the super typhoon victims. During at least two Christmases after two major calamities had struck Luzon some years ago, several corporations and a good number of families donated sums of money that would have otherwise gone into their traditional holiday parties.
No one believes President Duterte when he said that he was more frightened (“mas natatakot ako”) with the number of deaths from the onslaught of Odette than with the cost of damaged and collapsed infrastructure and government facilities.
Catastrophe victims have customarily drawn the President’s sympathy, but not the 15,000 fatalities from EJKs. Probably to him, nature’s merciless violence in the Visayas and Mindanao was more superior than the brutality suffered by those who have fallen by the wayside, victims of EJKs.
People can only surmise why he has reserved no ounce of sympathy or compassion even for some 30 EJKs that the DOJ has declared as victims of summary killings.
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Reporter and radio anchor turned-filmmaker Arlyn dela Cruz attained what many news reporters have aspired for, her first scoop, with ABS-CBN, the Sipadan hostage-taking, and quickly earned a name in the broadcast industry.
After that, she became more relentless, turning out one scoop after another. She fearlessly entered the lairs of the MNLF and MILF, one of the few journalists welcomed by the Muslim extremists. And Arlyn cared little that she was a woman.
She went beyond telling the stories, she recreated them with grit through two critically-acclaimed films. Arlyn has succumbed to colon cancer, one of the most painful ailments, that she endured for several months.
