Dear Editor,
As the election campaign heats up when people in power worry about the threat to their tenuous hold on it, they will use the seemingly vast reservoir of resources of the government at their disposal to assure the victory of those whose support is essential if they wish to strengthen or prolong their stay at the helm.
A great number of Filipinos have been suffering from hunger for years now caused by unemployment, underemployment and the government's inability to provide for its citizens. Surveys after surveys through the years have been finding the number of those suffering from hunger grow but those who have been in control of the highest offices of this land do not seem to see the hungry nor hear the the rumblings of millions of empty stomachs from their insulated and secure mansions and cornucopic tables and pantries.
They are in denial. They do not want to admit that millions of poor people in this country barely have two meals a daily or a budget of about 50 pesos for food per person per day but believe rather the doubtful accounts of some selected barangay folks who testify that food is so cheap in their community that people even eat four times some days.
Testimonies such as that only the lazy are hungry jibes well with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's admonition that the poor should spend less on luxury like cell phone loads and use the money instead on basic needs.
Macapagal-Arroyo listens only to what she wants to hear, even at the sound of her own lies and denials. Until lately when she finally admitted the Social Weather Station survey that one in five families suffer from hunger.
All of a sudden there is money to fund her food-for-school and food-for-work programs which aim to encourage children to go to school where free food is given and the jobless to work by sweeping the streets when there are already enough Metro Manila aides doing the job.
In a country close to China and where millions of Chinese live, she should have learned about the Chinese wisdom that "giving a man fish to eat will make him eat once while teaching him how to catch fish will make him eat all his life."
Now she is cracking the whip on her "Yes Ma'am" cabinet members who dare not court her terrifying tongue lashing public by telling her like it is like the way hapless Education Undersecretary Fe Hidalgo was subjected to.
The glaring reality of widespread poverty that causes hunger and malnutrition can no longer be denied by a leadership which praises itself for what it believes as its successful economic policies which Macapagal-Arroyo daydreams would help make the Philippines a "first world" country in the future.
The tragedy for the Filipinos is that she seems to believe in her fantasy.
Several months have passed since the two destructive typhoons devastated the Bicol region but it is only when relief funds are suddenly available to alleviate the misery of the victims of those catastrophes.
Funds for them will be released just in time before the elections when the "humanitarian" aid, courtesy of the Arroyo administration will be fresh in the recipients' mind by the time they cast their votes.
How long will she keep on fooling the Filipinos including herself?
That one-billion-peso fund to wage war against hunger launch right before the elections is a naked attempt to buy the votes ofthe hungry millions who may enjoy short a term solution to a very long term problem which a great number of the poor have been suffering from cradle to casket.
Poor people have short life expectancy.
Ramon Mayuga
Essen, Germany
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