Category: suicide

suicide’s a bitch (updated)

UP manila and CHED are grasping at straws, hoping an investigation will reveal that it wasn’t just the tuition problem but a confluence of events — besides the poverty, there was an unfaithful boyfriend perhaps?  an uncaring or cruel parent?   a personality or mental disorder that suddenly manifested?  all of the above? — that drove kristel to suicide.

but even if she had had other problems, doubtless the overriding one was the tuition problem, which preoccupied and worried her no end over the last months of her life. and she and her parents did not lack for due diligence, checking out all options, writing the letters that had to be written, pleading begging meeting with admin people for help, trying to meet deadlines, dealing with red tape, while studying to get good grades.

it’s easy to say that she could should have settled for less, like PUP where it’s cheaper, or that she could have, while on leave-of-absence, gotten a job and made ipon to pay her loans and the next tuition.  it’s easy to say that she should have been strong and tough, rolled with the punches instead of throwing in the towel. easy to say she was wrong, she was sick, she was dysfunctional.

easy to say, because clearly you have no idea what it’s like to be poor, most likely you don’t really KNOW anyone who’s poor, and you just do not have the mind-heart to imagine the suffering and despair that being poor, having no money, having to go hungry is all about.  obviously, you are happy enough with the status quo, you are happy enough with this state of affairs in which you find yourself among the fortunate few, and you are in denial about the gross and long-running injustice that underpins your individual happiness, never mind that it has oppressed so many for so long.

yeah, it’s infinitely easier to condemn kristel than to condemn the political economic educational system that is at the root of our poverty.  yes, OUR poverty, because the poverty of the majority is the poverty of all.  ang sakit ng kalingkingan ay sakit ng buong katawan; lalo pang masakit kung halos buong katawan ang naghihirap.  and if you don’t feel the sakit, if you’re dedma, then you must be an extremely dead cell, like hair, or patay na kuko, and the least you can do is suffer our grief in dead silence.

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read, too, ana marie pamintuan’s Despair, and rody vera’s facebook status that i’m privileged to share here.

Rodolfo Vera  May mga nagsasabi na marami daw factors kung bakit nagsu-suicide ang isang tao kung kaya’t hindi daw dapat ibintang sa sistema ang kamatayan ni Kristel. At saka hindi naman daw sinabi ng sistema na magpakamatay siya. Marami naman daw nagkagayon ang financial situation pero hindi naman nagpakamatay. Gusto kong isuka sa kanila ang mga katwirang iyan nang marinig ko si Christopher Tejada, ang tatay ni Kristel, kung paano niya nasaksihan ang dahan-dahang pagbulusok ng damdamin at kalagayan ni Kristel:

“Sa Sta Cruz kami noon, bumili ang anak ko ng kendi sa halagang 20 pesos. Ang sabi ko, ‘anak, bakit mo ginastos lahat iyan sa kendi?’ Ang sagot niya sa akin, ‘Tay, lunch ko na po ito.’ Ganoon siya ka pursigido para lang makapasok sa school… Kahit pa siya magutom, makapasok lang. UP ang naging buhay niya…”

Maaring maraming factor ang nagdudulot ng pagpapatiwakal ng isang tao. PERO hindi ibig sabihin na natawaran na ang pinsalang dinulot ng tiwaling sistema sa edukasyon sa isang tulad ni Kristel. Totoong maraming nananatiling buhay at nagtitimpi lamang, o tinitiis ang ganyang sistema. Nagpapasya ang iba na huwag na lang ito pansinin, huwag nang manggulo para sa pagbabago. Sa partikular na kontekstong ito hindi ko tuloy alam kung sino sa kanila ang mas matapang.

Oo, hindi sinabi ng sistema na magpakamatay tayo. Dahil walang pakialam ang sistema kung magpakamatay ka, o magutom ka, o mag-abroad ka, o manigas ka sa kinatatayuan mo ngayon. Ang importante lang sa sistema ay magbayad ka. Wala itong pakialam kung saan mo kukunin ang pambayad. At hindi magbabago ang sistema kung tiniis mo lang ito dahil kapag tiniis mo ito, magiging pruweba ka lang ng sistema na epektibo naman pala ito. Kaya natin tinutuligsa ang sistema ay dahil WALA ITONG PAKIALAM kung buhay o mamatay o magutom ang enrolee. Basta nagbayad siya. Yun ang bulgar, yun ang burgis. Yun ang walang puso. Nakakasulasok. Ito ang pinakanakakahiyang panahon para sa U.P. at sistemang edukasyon sa bayan ko.

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catharsis, cleansing, purge

i’ve been reading, hearing, the word “catharsis” since the general’s suicide and the prospect of continued senate investigations into corruption in the armed forces of the philippines.

The Garcia-Rabusa scandal … “should be a catharsis for  the entire society, not just military. The issue does not begin and  end with the military.” — Carolina Hernandez

Whatever it was, his (Rabusa’s) decision to testify on systemic corruption in the military has resulted in what many now say is a “catharsis” for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), long vilified as one of the most corrupt institutions in the country. — Carlos Conde

“When all is said and done, the Armed Forces, as an institution, should come out of this reformed, better, a stronger institution. This is what we want. This will be like catharsis.” — Danny Lim

and on strictly politics from pia hontiveros, at one point in the same breath as “villification”, in a question to rabusa re the effects of a continued investigation  (correct me if i heard wrong).

naguluhan ako kasi in psychology, catharsis is a purely emotional thing, usually the relief of emotional tensions (brought on by inner conflicts) whether through psychotherapy or as audience to tragic drama.   but wait, it also means a purging, maybe that’s what they mean, maybe they’re taking it beyond the emotional into the political and systemic.   sana naman.

but let’s not use words that very few understand, let’s not use vague  esoteric terms, let’s call a spade a spade.   para malinaw what the goal is, let’s call it a purge, a cleansing, of the impure, the corrupt, the immoral in the armed forces.  then we have a better chance of success.

Political Suicide

Ben Kritz

… Far from sending any sort of message, a suicide leaves layers upon layers of questions, particularly so when the “victim” is a public figure whose action is intimately related in one way or another to the business of The People. As Benign0 asked a few days ago:

“Who are we to judge Angelo Reyes? Who are we to presume to judge the circumstances of his death — an apparent suicide as the Media reports say? And if indeed, Reyes killed himself do we really believe that the state of his mind moments before his death could ever be knowable?”

Indeed, it can’t be; the person who takes his own life must be in a very dark place, a place that means something, but means something to him and him alone. Sometimes the motivation, or rather an aspect of it, is circumstantially apparent; Budd Dwyer, for example, could save his pension and insurance for his family (and the huge legal bills he had incurred) by dying in office. But he never gave that reason, and the reasons he did give made no sense to anyone, and maybe didn’t even make sense to him. And as much can be said of the clues Angelo Reyes left behind in his distraught ramblings to a few friends in his last days.

Any judgment of the suicide itself is pure speculation; it is as prejudicial to consider the dead man “honorable” for choosing to be that way as it is to characterize the suicide as an admission of guilt. Those are nothing more than characterizations of our own reactions to it, and not any sort of truth. The suicide takes the truth with him, and that’s what makes it an ultimately selfish act. Whether there is honor or shame in the act, however, is a matter of sentiment; taboos, after all, are relative. In the end, that is the real tragedy of suicide: that so deliberate an act changes so little.

spinning suicide

Until the end, he was an officer, a gentleman. He did not betray anyone, he did not squeal.

libingan ng mga bayani?   full military honors?   what message are we sending here?   what disgraceful pattern are we setting?

there is nothing honourable about the general’s suicide, except of course to the family and friends and institutions he spared from investigation and incrimination.

while suicide may be an act of courage — it takes guts to kill oneself — it is also, in the context of corruption allegations, a cop-out, an escape from reality, an incapacity to do the right thing, a lack of moral fiber.

the right thing would have been to face the music, admit one’s culpabilities (if any), squeal on other wrongdoers (if any), and exonerate the innocent (if any), for the higher good, the good of the nation.

imagine if he and his wife, instead of ranting vs the whistleblowers, had bowed to the call of the times and told the truth, no matter how much it hurt, no matter that it would mean the end of a normal life, no matter the danger.

what a coup that would have been.   standing up for the truth.   a ninoy moment, an edsa moment, that the nation would have hailed extolled celebrated.   sayang.