Desperate Our Lives

The last four months in our country’s landscape had been so turbulent such that waking up in the morning not hearing a bad news can be deemed abnormal. Early February ZTE star witness Jun Lozada surfaced on national tv alleging he was kidnapped by G-men who attempted to silence him but aborted the plan when media people becomes noisy on radio and on tv and his disappearance becomes too hot to handle. Senate investigation on his alleged kidnapping became the subject of a Senate investigation implicating high government officials from the police to the cabinet members and their understudies. One witness follows another and until now the inquiry has not been put to a close. In late March until April, the country was in a quandary where to get rice, our national staple. Supply disappeared in the market and when warehouses were raided, authorities found enough supply were being hoarded to make an appearance of less supply and high demand thus commanding a higher selling price. Cheap rice were repacked and sold at premium prices by merely packing the commodity in superior looking rice bags. First of May, labor leaders and workers trooped to the streets to demand wage hike to keep abreast with the rising cost of prime commodities. Different suggestions were made as to grant and implementations of the wage increase. Almost immediately, consumers were taken for a ride by politicians to demand the removal of charging of electrical pilferage known as systems loss – power not actually used by consumers but pilfered by illegal users then billed by the power company to its legitimate consumers. Middle of May i.e. May 16th, shortly before 9AM, 9 RCBC employees were massacred in Cabuyao, Laguna when bank robbers shot them in the head, point blank. A 10th victim, expired 2 days later. The victims of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago in 1929 were happier. Bugs Moran boys were slaughtered by Al Capone’s gang, its mortal enemies. In the Cabuyao carnage, they were not the bank robbers enemies or rivals but ordinary bank employees tasked as keepers and handlers of money. Two days later, another massacre happened in Calamba, also in Laguna. Here, eight victims were killed. Less than a week after these two massacres, Tropical Storm Cosme devastated Northern Luzon leaving more than 40 people dead, destroyed thousands of houses and school buildings rendering the opening of classes is these areas in June doubtful. Prices of oil products were raised resulting to a fare hike nobody wants. Shortly before weekend, four buses of a provincial bus company were torched right at their terminal in the metropolis. Allegedly, extortion is the motive of the crime although not likely. Disgruntled bus drivers and conductors dismissed by management for various offenses were the likely culprits in this incident. In higher education, surveys shows at least 30 per cent dropout for the coming school year is anticipated. Reasons were the hike in tuition fees and parents not capable of raising the amount for their children’s school fees would rather allow their children to look for a job where they qualify to augment the family’s income. Many students are transferring from the private schools to the state colleges and universities to avail of the low tuition fees since the state funds these schools through the national budget. And when these students graduates, no jobs await them here so they leave their love ones to seek that proverbial greener pastures outside the country. New problems keep coming faster than we solve the present ones. It is said, the cost of dying is more than the cost of living. Otherwise, many of our suffering countrymen would have committed suicide or genocide long time ago. The real hopeless ones did. With each passing day, desperate people are rising in numbers. People wanting for a job, food, shelter, clothing, medicines for the sick, education for our children, the barest of necessities. Indeed, many people in our midst - young and old, learned and unlearned are desperate just to survive,