Gruesome massacre

My email is full of angry cries and denunciations of the massacre of, as of this writing, 57 persons in Maguindanao.

Lakas standard-bearer Gilbert Teodoro may have demonstrated the culture of leadership he believes in, and the kind of “president” he will be if and when elected, with his swift and uncompromising declaration to seek the truth, defend the aggrieved, and punish the guilty in the aftermath of the recent gruesome killings in Maguindanao, and immediately expelling the Ampatuan clan from the rolls of his political party – a political action that runs counter to the Amang Rodriguez principle that “politics is addition.”

On the other hand, the decision of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in working for the immediate surrender of Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. prevented a bloodbath between the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus.

The nation, nay, the whole world, is watching how the Philippine government will handle the situation. It is clear, as Secretary Cerge Remonde said at yesterday’s Malacañang press conference, that while some observers suggest the “intervention” of foreign organizations in solving the Maguindanao murders, the Philippine government is striving to solve its own problems.

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Two recent foreign visitors who paid a courtesy on President Arroyo wear very impressive credentials, making their governments very proud of them.

Her visit to the Philippines two weeks ago was the second for Princess Maha Chari Sirindhorn, second daughter of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit of the Royal Kingdom of Thailand. The first time was in August 1991, when she received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in recognition of her patronage and promotion of Thai culture and traditions, advocacies in education, and children’s welfare.

She made her second trip upon the invitation of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos, which marked its 50th anniversary. She also visited the Philippine Rice Research Institute, the Philippine Carabao Center, and the ASEAN Center for Biodiversity.

Princess Maha, 52, has a Ph.D. in development education from Srinakharinwirot University. She is a scholar of Pali, Sanskrit, Cambodian and several other languages, and is a gifted practitioner of traditional Thai musical instruments.

Her personal projects revolve around children’s welfare. She had followed in the footsteps of her mother, Queen Sirikit, who made it her special charity to aid the families of Thai police and soldiers who were wounded or killed in the line of duty. When Princess Maha turned 20, she spent the cash gifts she received from her parents and her own funds, to put up the Sai Jai Thai Foundation to give financial assistance and vocational training for disabled Thais.

In 1977, Sirindhorn embarked upon her work with Thailand’s border patrol schools. Her grandmother, the princess mother, had established these schools in 1955 to serve the needs of children in the remote and often turbulent borders. By the late 1970s the program had grown to include more than a hundred schools.

Granddaughter Sirindhorn’s special interest was in nutrition. She had noticed in her tours of the countryside that rural children seemed physically underdeveloped and malnourished. She established a fund and launched a school lunch program, in which teachers were trained to help their pupils plant schoolyard vegetable gardens (Sirindhorn provided tools and seeds) and prepare healthful and tasty meals each lunchtime. Before long, the parents were assisting in the cooking.

She wanted the children not to become dependent on “free food,” so she personally visited the schools to see the students growing vegetables themselves. By 1991, 170 schools were involved, serving 17,500 school children.

Then in 1988, during a tour of Narathiwat, the southernmost province on the Gulf of Siam, she noticed an unusual number of youngsters who appeared weak and small for their age. She learned that they were suffering from protein energy malnutrition (PEM). She engaged several government agencies to design an integrated nutritional program, to work with the province’s agricultural sector in improving livestock and poultry raising skills, and to promote home vegetable gardens and fish farms. A few years later, studies showed that the number of children suffering from moderate and severe malnutrition in the province had declined.

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The second visitor in Malacanang was just as interesting, albeit in non-agricultural pursuits. Bouthania Shaaban, 46, is the minister of political affairs and media advisor at the presidency of Syria. She had come with the delegation led by Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah al-Dardari which signed six memorandums of agreement with Cabinet officials. These MOAs provide for the promotion of tourism, the One-Town One-Product program; micro, small and medium enterprises, housing and construction, investments, and trade and economic cooperation.

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde organized a luncheon meeting between his Syrian counterpart and women newspaper columnists. The meeting was invigorating, with Dr. Shaaban talking about the high status of Syrian women (no different from women in the West), about misconceptions about Arab women having been instigated by women in the West, and about Syrian women’s freedom to express their thoughts in their writings.

Dr. Shaaban is one of two female Cabinet members, and another woman occupies the highest position of vice-president. She has served as minister of expatriates, director of foreign media, interpreter for the Syrian president and adviser for the minister of foreign affairs.

A holder of a doctorate degree in English literature, she has served as vice president of the Arab Writers Union, professor of romantic poetry at the Damascus University, and lecturer at the English department of Constantine University in Algeria. She is a newspaper editor and columnist, and has written books on Arab women novelists, and poetry and politics inspired by the British poet Percy Bessie Shelley who helped unionists during his time.

She is an outspoken fighter for the rights of Palestinians to have their own state, and her views have invited threats to her life, causing her three children to ask her to be careful. Her husband supports her causes, she said.

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Responding to my column on persons with disabilities, Numeriano Obnamia writes:

“Your column needs to be addressed in Philippine society and culture. Filipinos do not take kindly to people with disabilities due to the lack of education, understanding, and compassion for the afflicted. Our culture always looks for the worst in people, makes fun of them, and calls them names that stick forever and undermine self-confidence, resulting in misery and ultimately, failure in life. Many feel good about making fun of others. It has become a sport.”

Obnamia cites as examples of people’s insensitivity to the disabled, calling a person with polio and who walks with a limp or crutches, as “engineer”; treating a deaf-mute person as a moron, and making fun of harelips.

“We know that the practice of name-calling goes on and on, but nobody dares discuss the matter in public fora, the church does not open the subject for discussion, schools ignore the problem, the general society doesn’t care. In the New Testament, there are many instances where Jesus showed compassion for the infirmed, and the less fortunate. Let’s do the same.”

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