Poverty did not cause the killings

When that woman in Laguna poisoned her three young children and then killed herself with the same poison, every Juan and Maria in the Philippines promptly blamed the alleged desperation of the woman over her poverty as the cause for what amounted to a mass murder and suicide.

There is no denying that the deaths were a great human tragedy, as every death always is. After all, every human creation is a work of God, and therefore something that is full of hope for the world, not a source of misery that everyone can jump on.

There is also no denying that the woman was poor. Her husband was a lowly construction worker employed in Manila who just had too many mouths to feed (one other child who spent the night at the house of a relative managed to cheat death in the hands of his own mother). 

But an even greater tragedy was the blind willingness of people to immediately believe that it was the poverty of the woman that drove her into such a senseless act. How did we know that the cause was indeed poverty? Did the woman leave a note or something that said so?

In the absence of any evidence or witness who can actually prove beyond any doubt that the woman was driven by desperation born of poverty, there is really no saying what the cause was for the tragedy.

All we have is the theory of a relative, and the gullibility and the laziness-driven willingness of the police to swallow that theory hook, line and sinker without even so much as going through the motions of investigating.

People who are supposed to know better, including the Philippine media, were too quick and cavalier to believe the poverty angle and, worse, having so believed, promptly embarked on a witchhunt in order to find somebody to blame.

And the whole sordid episode turned into something even more tragic as it evolved into a circus in which every clown with a trick to perform did so on the national stage, as if this was some spectacle meant to highlight their two-cents worth human concern.

Ousted president and convicted plunderer Joseph Estrada promptly exploded on the scene, visiting the home of what was left of the family in Laguna and donating P50,000 as if the money means anything anymore to anyone.

And a giant television network swiftly kicked into high gear its anti-Arroyo bias by giving prime time to more opinionated theorizing by a former social welfare secretary who, as the network knew, can only talk of nothing but bad things against the government.

To the credit of the network, it did interview the incumbent social welfare secretary. But there is the rub. If it already got it straight from the horse's mouth, why ask for the opinion of somebody no longer in authority to say something other than the expected criticism?

If the network really wanted to balance things out, going to a discredited former secretary who is expected to spew nothing else but venom was not the right thing to go about it. What it should have done was get in touch with the real experts and arrive at the truth.

For instance, rather than dwell on the unsubstantiated theory about poverty having driven the woman to kill her children and herself, why did the network and everyone else not seek out psychiatrists and other behavioral experts for their take on the matter.

If the truth be told, that woman, may she finally find peace in death, was an irresponsible mother, who was all to willing to expand her family with constant child-bearing despite her incapacity to provide for them, but was all too unwilling to face the consequences.

If poverty really caused the killing spree, then it was an exception. The Philippines is neck-deep in poverty yet everywhere you look is a shining example of poor people struggling to be free of their poverty and succeeding, by lighting candles instead of cursing the darkness.