so, on facebook, someone’s blaming inveighing against the father now for “washing his hands in public of any responsibility he may have had in this tragedy” and of turning the university into the “sole scapegoat.” (19 likes so far.) so whose fault is it really that the father, a college graduate, was laid off and could find no job, kaya parttime taxi driver lang? the father’s? he didn’t try hard enough? heck no, it’s the economy, stupid!
I’m aghast at and overwhelmed and thoroughly defeated by the death of Kristel Pilar Mariz Tejada. Some deaths do not particularly weigh heavily on the mind; others do. This is one of those that do.
… UP officials theorize that Tejada may have had all sorts of personal problems. But they do not rule out the possibility that her financial troubles might also have contributed to it. They have since sent their commiseration to the Tejada family and, not a little ironically, financial help to see them through in their hour of need. They cannot blame the Tejadas if the Tejadas regard their overtures less than appreciatively and remember the saying about “Aanhin pa ang damo….”
It’s tragic in all the ways that tragic can be.
At the very least, it’s so in that it’s truly tragic to be poor, mahirap ang mahirap. Many years ago, I wrote a speech titled “Tongues on Fire,” which also became the title of a book of speeches I later published. There I talked about a horrific insight I got about what it means to be poor. I’ve known poor, I’ve breathed poor, I’ve lived poor. And I’ve not forgotten the sight and sound and smell of poor, I’ve not forgotten the fear and trembling of poor.
But nothing quite prepared me for a news story I read about someone not just taking his own life but those of his entire family from having nothing in life. Nothing to see him through, nothing to look forward to. The guy had tried to keep his wife’s and five kids’ bodies and souls together, but adversity kept thwarting his efforts. The sound of his children crying themselves to sleep on their empty stomachs haunted him, and finally he and his wife decided to end it all and drag their children into it. The man came home one day, mixed insecticide into a last meal, and they went to sleep without ever waking up.
An insanity? The action of a thoroughly deranged man? To be sure. But it also gives glimpses into the pit of desperation, into the darkness of despair, into the nightmare of the poor. It is the feeling of having no one to turn to, no refuge to go to, no means of escape. It’s the feeling of being boxed in, you cannot move an inch however you squirm or thrash about.
You look at it with rich or middle-class eyes, you’ll find P6,337 or even P8,000 the silliest thing to die for. Indeed, the most incomprehensible thing to kill yourself for. Which, too, should give us whole new insights into our relative valuations of value. A peso may be bubog to us, but it is life and death, or at least food and hunger, to the street kids that regularly scour the streets badgering cars for coins.
But what makes this even more tragic is that it has to do with education, with learning, with enlightenment. It has to do with escape, with freedom, with a heroic effort to better one’s lot. What makes this even more tragic is that whatever drove Tejada to still her breath, whatever other grief she may have had in life, a good part of it was also that she could no longer go to school, she could no longer escape, she could no longer dream the dream. How can you not weep at the utter wastefulness of the wanton destruction of this girl? How can you not feel bereft at the loss of so precious a life?
That Tejada was studying at UP to begin with must suggest that she was a bright and promising kid. You cannot get to UP without being so, poor alone doesn’t cut it. That she was taking up behavioral science hammers home the loss, or the irony of that loss, all the more. To want to understood how people behave, why people act the way they do, but to not understand in the here and now why people do what they do, why life takes on the aspect of something unfeeling, something cruel, something deadly—that is the most infuriating and depressing thing of all.
Tejada may have died by her own hand, but so only literally, so only visibly, so only immediately. In the end, her hand may have been pushed to it by other things, by other beings, by other people. In the end, her death is an indictment of this country, it is an indictment of all of us, that we can allow things like this to come to pass. John Donne once said that the death of a single person diminishes us all. Certainly, the death of this one person diminishes us all.
The death of this one child impoverishes us all.
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.
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.
*
I HAVE had three very long conversations on the Sabah issue with historian Samuel K. Tan (PhD from Syracuse), who taught at UP for 30 years and was at one point the chairman of the History Department. Tan is a very prolific writer with at least six books under his belt, including A History of the Philippines, The Muslim South and Beyond, Suratsog (annotated Bibliography of Jawi materials of the Muslim South), Selected Essays on the Filipino Muslims. His interest in the Sabah issue may be because he himself was born and raised in Sulu, but he is a treasure trove of information on the topic. And I’d like to share some of what I learned from him, as well as from his brother, lawyer Ancheta Tan.
First, the question of whether the transaction between the Sultan of Sulu (Jamalul Kiram I) and Gustave Baron Overbeck in 1878 was a cession (grant) or a lease. The contract was written in Tausog — the sultan spoke no English — and the controversy centers on the translation of the Tausog word “padjak.” You have American, Dutch and Spanish linguists on one side (lease) and the British on the other (cede/grant).
Well, Tan is Tausog, and his Suratsog is an annotated translation of Tausog documents spanning the reign of Sultan Jamalul Kiram II. And he says “padjak” is unambiguous: it means lease. Aside from the fact that the $5,000 annual payment in perpetuity is consistent with a lease contract and not with a cession, there is one argument, this time forwarded by Chet Tan, that should convince anyone but the British government, and now the Malaysian government. In Tausog, there is a specific term for “sale” (“dagang”), and “buy” (“bi”). So if North Borneo was sold or bought, the term used would not have been “padjak.” That British translation was clearly in bad faith, with malice aforethought.
I have elsewhere discussed another action in bad faith of the British government — when it annexed North Borneo as a colony a mere six days after the Philippines became independent, and faced with humongous problems related to the aftermath of WW II. But Samuel K. Tan points out another: this time related to the so-called Cobbold Commission.
But first, a little background. The Federation of Malaya, composed of 11 states in the Malay Peninsula, won its independence from Great Britain in 1957. It seems that there was growing international pressure at that time on the latter, including pressure from the United States, to grant independence to its colonies (their unpreparedness being no excuse, per the UN resolution). Two of its largest colonies were Sarawak and Sabah (formerly North Borneo) in the island of Borneo. Whether it was Tungku Abdul Rahman of Malaya or the British government who first got the idea to enfold Sabah and Sarawak into the Federation of Malaya (and call it Malaysia) is immaterial — but both countries certainly were enthusiastic about it. For the Federation, it would mean increasing their land area by two and a half times. For Great Britain, it would at least ensure that the former colonies would be “safe” from Indonesia and the Philippines.
And so the Cobbold Commission (CC) was created (Jan. 1962) formally known as “Commission of Enquiry,” with the stated purpose of ascertaining the views of the peoples of North Borneo and Sarawak on the proposed merger.
The CC was composed of three British: Cobbold, former governor of the Bank of England, plus a former governor of Sarawak, and a former official of the Federation of Malaya; on the Malayan side, a former chief minister and the top official of the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Samuel Tan points out a glaring flaw: the citizens of Sabah and Sarawak had no representation in the CC.
Tan also points out another glaring shortcoming: that no referendum was actually held, in the sense of the people of Sabah and Sarawak casting a vote to be part of the proposed Malaysia. What instead happened was either that their “leaders” were consulted and/or “hearings” were conducted.
Understand, Reader, that Sabah and Sarawak together have a land area about two-thirds the size of the Philippines. And yet by June of 1962,or scarcely five months after the CC was formed, its report was submitted (in confidence) to their principals — the prime ministers of Great Britain and the Malayan Federation respectively.
And guess what it said? That one-third of the people of Sabah and Sarawak were fully supportive; one-third were conditionally supportive (safeguards had to be included); and one third-wanted either that Sarawak and North Borneo gain independence first before thinking about a merger, or were totally against the merger.
That was June, right? And yet in August of the same year, the CC final report stated that more than 70% of the people of North Borneo and Sarawak were in favor. What kind of arithmetic did they use between June and August? Reportedly, the North Borneans were very surprised at the result.
What is not a surprise that the CC declared itself to be in firm support for a federated Malaysia.
In contemporary lingo, the whole process, although Samuel K. Tan was too polite to say it, was “lutong makaw.”
There is more: Tan says that when it was proposed that the UN step in, in light of several objections raised internally and internationally, Great Britain gave notice that it would not be bound by the findings and recommendations of U Thant (UN Secretary General at the time) Can you imagine the effect that announcement would have on the UN’s report?
And as if to add insult to injury, Tan also recalls that observers sent by the Philippines and Indonesia were hampered by bureaucratic obstacles.