this story originally appeared in the philippine daily inquirer on September 25, 1999.
I did not vote for President Estrada. I made my decision on election day, at the very last minute when I could no longer ignore the political slogans and campaign posters that were everywhere despite the ban. Who would I vote for? I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to be apolitical, and I thought I could remain so. On May 11, 1998, at 28,000 feet above the ground, the front pages of newspapers were staring at me with their attractively boxed summaries of the pluses and minuses of the candidates and I thought it’s time to make a choice.
I chose a Cebuano whose platform was decentralization, to spur growth in the provinces. Our cities, especially Manila were way too congested. I did not even not consider Joseph Estrada; he was not even an option as far as I was concerned. But I knew, and so did everybody else, that he would win. (In retrospect, those of us who did not vote for him should have gotten together early and rallied behind just one candidate instead of fragmenting ourselves into many minorities.)
Now I work in a government hospital. It is a world in itself, with its own subcultures, languages and hierarchy. The place reeks of red tape and bad government, lack of supplies and recycled corruption, crab mentality and hopeless poverty. There, I am surrounded by the poor who are dying and the well who are trying to deaden their senses. It’s easier to deal with it all through desensitization and detachment. Mr. Estrada was a very popular choice, going by what my patients tell me whenever I ask whom they voted for. These are patients who come in months, sometimes years, after contracting their diseases. They are patients of poverty and lack of education. These are the ones who have seen all of Joseph Estrada’s movies and believe him to be the incarnation of the good that will triumph over evil. They are the ones who will mob him when he walks in the streets or the markets, waving that gartered wrist. And they are the ones who come to us dying because they didn’t have the money for their jeepney fare to the Philippine General Hospital.
I wanted desperately to be among the crowd that marched on Ayala Avenue last month. Charter change, cronyism, press freedom-these are issues that cannot be ignored. But I think that the biggest issue is poverty. How ironic that it is the well-heeled and middle class who took to the streets and not the masses. I should be marching more for latter and less for myself. Raised in the Catholic glass bubble of a private school, my exposure to poverty then consisted of watching the scenery of squatter Manila whiz by on my daily trip to and from school. How ashamed I was of myself and my little school when I moved to the university and then started working and realized that the world out there was huge and much more colorful. That there was a whole spectrum between white and black which had been hidden from me, and a wide part of that spectrum was about 30 shades of gray poverty. I have come face to face with what it means to have absolutely nothing in this world. I didn’t see it in the movies. I see it every day when I go to work.
My current reality is the pediatrics ward of the country’s largest government hospital. There are babies die because their parents have no money to buy antibiotics. Sick babies are abandoned because their parents are tired of taking care of them and would rather concentrate on raising their healthy children. Little cockroaches scurry in and out of bedside tables. Cats frolic under the beds of children going into cardiac arrest. Their bantay sleep under the beds and jockey for position to get running water at four in the morning. It has always reminded me of a war shelter with its cramped living space, bad lighting, and countless mosquitoes. The place smells of poverty and disease. Last year, I examined a two-year-old boy with a diagnostic dilemma. No one knew what he had, and they narrowed it down to a blood disorder, along the lines of leukemia. After all, his brother was in the bed beside his and he had been diagnosed with leukemia. I noticed that the two boys were always dirty, smelling like a wet dishrag. They had been wearing the same clothes for at least two weeks. I shamelessly told their mother to please give her boys a bath-even just a sponge bath. Then I realized that they only had one little towel which was frayed and they only had one change of clothes. They couldn’t even afford to buy soap.
Another patient, Ella, had been in hospital for 60 days with a liver mass. She had been given the gamut of antibiotics, making her body a virtual drugstore. She was trying to fight off infection after infection. But her parents finally decided to bring her home when their debts reached P15,000. I doubt if she made it home alive. Her airways would have swollen shut within an hour after the tube that was feeding her oxygen was removed. These people are the President’s people. They are directly responsible for his success. They may care only for his good looks and superstar charm, which are enough to make him a winner in their hearts. But they are people too, with their own needs and with their own dreams. Those needs are never fully satisfied, and those dreams die with their first taste of abuse. There is nothing more devastating than the realization of one’s hopelessness. They voted for Mr. Estrada because they thought he was on their side. And he probably is. But being on their side and shouting it from the rooftops mean nothing if the actions say otherwise. It would be terribly unfair to blame the President for their poverty. But of all people, he is in the best position to do something to alleviate their misery.
There will never be a quick solution to poverty, but today there seems to be a quick way to making it grow. People today are poorer than they have ever been. I am just one of thousands of youth who are struggling to find my place in society. I used to be unconcerned about politics. I hate the red tape and the absence of common sense that abound in government. But the way Mr. Estrada and his friends flaunt their insensitivity shocks me. The way they take poverty and ignorance for granted makes me wonder what the Philippines will be when the term of the Estrada administration is over. A month or so after Mr. Estrada was sworn into office, I saw a bumper sticker that read: “DBM-I didn’t vote for him.” Don’t blame me either.