Connecting Plight

By Rolo B. Cena

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Dumaguete Star Informer

16 October 2016

Drugs are the present administration’s big war:  This has become a staple across the globe.  The other war, which Madam Veepee Leni Robredo articulated recently, is poverty, which she believes is bigger than the former.

In his first State of the Nation Address (SONA), Pres. Duterte mentioned that PDEA records showed an estimate of 3.7 million addicts in the country today.  These people thrive in all places, modest or not, high-end or poor – halls of the senate, congress, justices, schools, workplaces – everywhere!

According to SWS recent survey results, about 42% of the Filipino people claimed to be poor in contrast to the previous year’s 45%.  What a good number to hover in our database if indeed precise.

Duterte’s drugs and Robredo’s poverty may be two separate and distinct areas but, if I may opine, these are plights with connecting start and end buttons.  As published based of survey, this year’s poor people is 9.4 million while this year’s subject to narco-listed drugs personalities is 3.7 million.  Precisely Robredo was right if we just talk about the greatness in number of the former over the latter.  This is a simple arithmetic though. 

Statistics published by Rappler also tells us that of the total, about 74.21% of the 3.7 million alleged addicts are earning P11,000 and below.  This income bracket is considered income for the marginalized or poor.  Of the same statistics, about 38.98% are unemployed.  Metaphorically, if not actually, this translates to poor people.   Again, numbers would tell us that the actual number of poor people involved in drugs is about 2.7 million, which, if analyzed in relation to the 9.4 estimates of poor people, is about 30%.

What might aggravate the intensity of the interpretation of these numbers is the fact that about 56.76% are some college or high school students – they are not graduates, according to statistics.  91.22% of these are males.  What do these numbers mean?

Going back to Veepee Robredo, whose diplomatic deportment opposes the independence of Pres. Duterte, the bigger war that she was articulating is actually connected to the war Pres. Duterte is pushing.  Numbers would tell us that drug traffickers victimize the poor or the marginalized.   These victims buy and buy drugs to ease their need to consume.  Worse, they buy drugs using their monies intended for their basic needs.  In the end, they’d end up poorer.

In some occasion, after these demographics have fallen prey to the first line predators, they made them second line predators by making them drug peddlers.   This time, they earn by peddling while they use.   While they earn, the state of becoming heavily addicted to the substance make them deprived of a normal state, which is precursor to poverty.

Definitely, Veepee Robredo have seen, read, heard and known all these but her seeming refusal to understand and believe that drugs is the bigger war than poverty makes her statement non-sense.  Under the normal frame of thought of a completely sane human being, poverty can still be alleviated, remedied or addressed more easily than drugs.

In the previous decade, no Philippine president has ever articulated its war against drugs.  If there was, it was a mediocre approach; an approach completely different from the one employed by Pres. Duterte:  Completely an approach only a strong-willed political leader can do. 

Colombia, the biggest narco-nation with reportedly the biggest drugs cartel running the economy, has lately waged its all-out war against drugs.  Mexico is another South American country that is suffering from drug trafficking.  If we don’t do it now, we might become another Colombia in the Far Eastern Asian continent.  As former president Ramos has articulated earlier:  “Do it now or don’t at all.”

If Veepee Robredo is truly a statesman and a public servant next to the president who is also duly mandated by the people of the republic, I believe she should not only be staying demure or murmuring her hullabaloos only her high-end office walls can hear.  She should be the partner of Pres. Duterte in waging war against all evils of the society.  Pres. Duterte takes care of drugs; Veepee Robredo takes care of poverty.  This is a good partnership.  After all, Duterte is the president; Robredo is the vice president - both elected by the constituents of the archipelagic Philippines where they serve.

Furthermore, Veepee Robredo must embrace the fact that her immediate boss is no longer former Pres. Aquino and former DILG Secretary Mar Roxas; her immediate head is Pres. Duterte who, along with her, is duly accountable to the people of the Philippines.

Why can’t she just show support to the president if indeed, she claims to be a public servant?  Is she serving the Filipino people – regardless of whether they voted for her or not – or the select few whose interest in abetting her bordered on the usability of her position now over the Chief Executive who is her immediate boss?

I thought I’ve heard her once say delicadeza.  Where is the public bus-riding image that she once projects?