EDITORIAL - Cruel punishment

If there is a message in the catastrophic typhoon that swept through the Visayas last week, as well as in the just-as-catastrophic earthquake that hit pretty much of the same area only three weeks earlier, it must have remained very well hidden.

What is very evident in people's minds and in their hearts, even if maybe unexpressed and unspoken, is that the twin catastrophes, if meant as a punishment, certainly punished the wrong people. The victims who lost loved ones and cherished possessions are probably as innocent as they come.

The hardest-hit victims, they who dwelt in the flimsiest houses and ate the simplest of meals, did not know what hit them and why. They were just going about their lives as unobtrusively as may be expected of the commonest of folks.

They had nothing to do with the high crimes of greed and theft and intrigue that characterize the way of life of those high and mighty enough to occupy the uppermost echelons of privilege and class in Philippine society.

Most of the victims have probably never set foot in Malacañang and certainly never entertained the thought of ever getting to. They probably have never shaken the hand of a senator in genuine friendship nor got called by name by a congressman. They probably do not even understand the real depth of this Napoles thingy.

And yet there they are, their lives devastated in a way that cannot be called any other way but as a punishment. But for what? They have done nothing that merited the kind of suffering they are now undergoing. If it is a test, it is not for those who never enrolled in the first place.

These are very challenging times for the victims. Not only have they lost what should not have been taken away from them, at least not in such a cruel and devastating matter, they are in very real danger of losing the only thing that keeps them going for what they never had -- their faith.

Faith is the source of many things -- their underlying goodness as human beings, their ability to keep on hoping in face of repeated frustration of even the simplest desires, and their innate feeling of community toward others. Now all that is in a very precarious balance. Who or what tilts it where is anybody's guess.