Obama in America, hunger in the Philippines

By Jose Ma. Montelibano
Excerpt from Inquirer.net

Of course, I was watching television all morning and early afternoon on Wednesday . . . There seemed nothing more important than the Barack Obama victory and what it represents to America and the world. . . . What both stood for is of utmost relevance even to Filipinos . . .

While shaking my head at the impact of an Obama victory and the hopes that America can be a better country for the world, I was forming thoughts and words for this article . . . Then, a phone call jarred my musings and hurled me back to a reality much closer to home. It was a friend who wanted to coordinate a feeding session in a depressed area this Sunday and wanted to confirm certain details. But it was a news report that he alerted me to that shook me even though I have known it and have been trying to do what I can about it. It was an article in a major newspaper that reported the Philippines as the fifth-hungriest country in the world.

I have been writing about hunger ever since results of the hunger incidence survey by the poll group Social Weather Stations were published. . . . It is a great risk for an opinion writer to write about the same topic, to give the same opinion, over and over again. But I have no choice. Or, more accurately, if I choose otherwise, I would not be able to live with myself in peace, in honor.

 

If there has been an outcry, then there is no need for an Internet writer like me to dedicate extra articles to the issue of hunger. But there is hardly any. There was one statement . . . One statement that I hoped would lead to a massive appeal to feed the hungry, but did not.

How, then, can a Filipino be silent? How, then, can a Christian be silent? Who will speak for the hungry, who will speak for the poor from where the hungry come from? A deafening message is being communicated by the sheer presence of beggars, of street children, of scavengers, of squatters who sleep on sidewalks, under bridges and along canals. But they have been with us almost forever, and their message has been unheard, not listened to, their presence shooed away, repulsed, even denied by our souls.

They say the sun shines in a new America. . . . Obama ushers in a fresh gust of wind we call change and we are happy for America because millions of Americans citizens with Filipino blood will be part of that change.

What about the Philippines? I am not asking that corruption be eliminated, that inefficiency be reformed, that liars and thieves be imprisoned. I am asking only that we not tolerate hunger, that we not pretend it is not there, that we not sleep peacefully in the midst of it.

Struggling to maintain objectivity . . . I said about the hunger of our people:

This is a collective and public sin, a rejection of the mission and life of Jesus, a failure of government, a failure of religion, an indictment of our societal values and behavior, a curse that will haunt us and our culture.

All claims at being faithful to our religious beliefs have suddenly become hollow, perhaps even false. Christians and Muslims in the Philippines must move quickly to succor the hungry, whisper our humble apologies to them, and then feed a hungry people proportionate to the massiveness of the hunger afflicting them.

Will the poor and the hungry ever have their Obama? So the poor and hungry even have to need an Obama? Are we who are not poor and hungry not enough for fellow Filipinos who are? Is not being one people created by one God in a beautiful and bountiful land more than enough to make us remember the pain of many and evoke human compassion to rescue them?