Dignity

There are a lot of things and services that many of our unfortunate fellow Filipinos do not have access to – from quality education to proper health care.

As is usually the case, they are able to avail themselves of these social services but in poor quality – from expired vaccines in barangay health centers to classrooms that leak when the rains come. If the problem isn’t expired vaccines, there are many others – a lack of qualified barangay health workers, ill-equipped centers and government hospitals.

It’s also not uncommon to see classes being held in ankle-deep floods in some parts of our country – both teachers and young boys and girls, carrying on with the lessons despite the flooding. When there is no rain, the problems include crowded classrooms, lack of facilities and supplies, a shortage of qualified teachers and many more. Many of these problems are in the EDCOM II report.

All these inadequacies strip Filipinos of the dignity they deserve. Each of us deserves to live a dignified life.

Dignity is the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect. This means that as citizens, we must be accorded the social services which the Constitution mandates us to have with honor and respect. This includes the right to dignified education and health care.

One of my first assignments as a rookie journalist was to cover a cancer-stricken man who was dying in a hospital room in a government hospital in Quezon City. The room had seen better days. I remember noticing the broken windows, the dilapidated bed and the miserable charity ward. At the center of it all was the 69-year-old patient who was wasting away, waiting for death to come.

My story was published on Nov. 12, 1999. I’m sure that government hospital has had little improvement, if any, especially with the chronic underfunding of our health budget.

Here in our country, our leaders care very little about dignity, if it’s even on their mind.

If they did, they wouldn’t let our children study in classrooms that aren’t decent or conducive enough to learning. In some far-flung villages in the country, we let them walk miles and miles to school, often in worn-out shoes, because believe it or not, some areas still can’t be reached by vehicles. This is no thanks to local executives and lawmakers who steal the money meant for these roads.

If they did, they wouldn’t allow our people to get health care in hospitals that have seen better days – hospitals where you might get sicker than better because their facilities are dilapidated, worn-out and ill-equipped to handle the latest medical needs.

If they did, they wouldn’t let our people find shelter in the sidewalks or dark nooks and crannies of Metro Manila or in hodgepodge makeshift homes in maze-like slums that are teeming with poverty. They wouldn’t let them relocate in areas so far from civilization, when developers have bulldozed their shanties to make way for condos and resorts.

If they did, they wouldn’t allow them to walk along dizzying and elevated walkways along EDSA just to get to the train station or to cross to the other side for a bus ride home.

And do you remember the Dolomite Beach along Manila Bay?

That for me was one concrete example of government action that stripped citizens of dignity.

Sure, that fake white sand beach was beautiful but it was merely opium, with a nearly P400-million tab. It was a distraction, like barbiturates in our veins to make us forget what we really needed at the time when that magically appeared. That was during the COVID-19 pandemic and Filipinos, facing growing anxiety and mental health problems, were looking for concrete solutions.

But that was nothing but a band-aid solution. The masses were fooled into believing they could finally enjoy a stroll on the beach and experience white sand between their toes. But that was not even the real thing. It was dolomite. Our leaders couldn’t even give them a real beach.

Where’s the dignity in that?

The Kantian platitude

The early modern concept of dignity, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, originates with Immanuel Kant, who in his 1785 Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, argued that all persons have an inherent value, or dignity by virtue of their rational autonomy.

This value commands a distinct kind of moral respect, which we express by abiding by certain limits in our treatment of others. Thus, Kant argued that we have a categorical duty to treat persons always “as an end” and “never merely as a means.”

In more recent decades, the United Nations formally established inherent dignity in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights, affirming the “inherent dignity” and “equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” as the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

I think about dignity now because the campaign period has officially commenced. And as in previous elections, our people will be promised the moon and the stars, and kisses all they want.

They may be given kilos of rice and a few cans of sardines or packs of noodles for their crucial votes but we, the people, deserve so much more than that.

We need housing, education, public health and employment. But most of all, we need leaders who will treat Filipinos with dignity – not as crucial votes to be bought with a few pesos and a song.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.