Cake

That remark, truly said or not, has come down in history as the height of insensitivity, the arrogance of the powerful.

When SWS in its latest survey said that more Filipinos now feel the pangs of hunger than they did three months ago, La Presidenta, misma, says that the issue of hunger "cannot be totally attributed to poverty and lack of opportunity, but also to the spending patterns of the people".

And her spokesman, Ignacio "Toting" Bunye of two discs infamy, seconds that there is "a need to educate the people in the proper utilization of meager resources". He twits the poor for spending more on alcohol, cigarettes and cell phone loads.

Teach them Economics 101, Madam President. Teach them micro-economics, just as you regale everyone who cares to listen, specially the three "negociantes sin negocio" (that’s a Mar Roxas original) of your favorite business organizations, about the wonders of your macro-economic management.

That’s a piece of cake.

But wait! Even better if Congressman Miles Roces of the third district of Manila could tour Madam President and her Toting around Parola at the mouth of the Pasig. There she will witness for herself how men, women and children sitting on small footstools crowd around a banyera of imported garlic buds soaked in water. Then with small paring knives fashioned from some abandoned piece of metal, they proceed to peel each garlic clove. They are paid five pesos per kilo of peeled garlic cloves, which the middleman then sells to restaurants and food chains. Their hands are calloused from such painstaking and dreary tedium, and their only protection is some makeshift rubber sheeting tied around their palms. Would that their husbands used rubbers instead to sheath their human instrument and create less babies in the process.

They are able to individually peel some seven kilos each day, and if husband and wife both peel to their heart’s discontent, they would earn 70 pesos a day, enough to buy rice, three packs of instant noodles that they would then share with three children for the two meals each day that they nourish their emaciated bodies with. Whatever is left goes to whatever they could save to pay the rent in the hovel someone else built over the flood-soaked land.

Some peel the grimy layers of onion bulbs instead. Their eyes have stopped crying, benumbed by the crush of poverty, their only survival opportunity in Gloria’s economic "recovery" being to use two hands and peel and peel.

Madam President and her favorite city mayor keep telling the poor that pro-creating more and more babies is alright, something that only the most archaic of theologians espouse, and deny them the information needed for them to space the birth of more mouths to feed. Go to Parola, la Puting Bato, the hovels of Paco and the esteros of Binondo, and see for yourself.

Some "overspending" males kill the tedium via the narcotic effects of alcohol and tobacco come Sunday afternoon. They buy the cheapest of gin or rum, and the cheapest of cigarettes, one stick at a time, and feast on a pulutan of barbecued pork skin. Yes, not lean meat with a sliver of fat - just skin - which some enterprising vendor buys for peanuts from the wet markets, soaked in vinegar and toyo and whatever else, then grilled over live coals.

That, Mr. Bunye, sir, is "luxury"?

Tell that to Hello Garci.

***

Now to switch to a funny tale.

Months ago, ex-beauty queen contestant Joelle Pelaez came to town from the US of A, claiming to whoever cared to listen that she was "gypped" and "used" by friends of deposed President Joseph Estrada, who allegedly courted her when he was yet in Malacañang.

Good copy for the salacious press, while it lasted. Soon, Joelle and mother Blanquita left town in a huff, after Estrada’s lawyers started asking why mother had not been arrested on a conviction for estafa.

Estrada sued the Pelaezes for the canard they spread. Blanquita was later, much later, interviewed by television and she confessed that she and her daughter were "used" to further demonize the Estrada that Edsa Dos tarnished. And the go-between, the agent of this "demonizing" process? Why, Miguelito el defensor de causas malas, Blanquita claims.

Twice ‘Tol pressed her in the Bay Area, Blanquita claims, to concoct the tale of Joelle. What would Mike say in his defense?

Something like this, perhaps: "It is I who went to Blanquita, yes, but it was not I who did the talking."

***

Let me correct the misimpression I may have made in last Tuesday’s column, involving a decent and honorable man, Vice-President Emmanuel Pelaez. I wrote about his famous quote to a police general, but in haste placed the date at after Ninoy’s assassination. It was an assassination attempt on Pelaez’ life, close to his New Manila residence, and while he was being wheeled into the sala de operacion of nearby St. Luke’s, he asked General Karingal (who was gunned down a year or so later), the poignant question, "What is happening to our country, General?"

Ask the same question, to Hermogenes Esperon, Eduardo Ermita, Hermogenes Ebdane, and maybe to Bunye, and ‘Tol, and Chavit, and Pichay, and nunca te olvidare, Mr. and Mrs. Jose Miguel Arroyo.