The Kidapawan killings

The Kidapawan killings are iconic. They reveal the painful truth behind the hollow boast of resplendent, albeit non-inclusive and disembodied, gross domestic productivity growth. 

When the poor people of Kidapawan begged and pleaded for simple sustenance as half a bowl of rice and a sip of water to see them through the gnawing hunger and desolation that continues to victimize them amidst radiant productivity ballyhooed to have grown exponentially under Benigno Aquino III, then where does the police, marshaled and mandated to protect the weak, find reason to silence them, murdering and brutalizing wantonly with state-sponsored violence?

Where does this propensity to maim and kill despondent farmers come from? Lessons in development economics from the Jesuits? Is it an undergraduate subject taught to the Pennsylvania pedigreed?

Or is it within the upbringing of the landed bigots that the moneyed powerful should view with disdain and contempt those who toil the earth, as was the case in the Mendiola Massacre of farmers then seeking genuine land reform, or the murders of innocents within Hacienda Luisita where the spirit of agrarian reform remains deliberately distorted and warped?

Do the Kidapawan killings simply update a policy where murderous default repeatedly punctuate governance?

The response of the Liberal Party governor in dilly-dallying aid previously promised is reminiscent of a similar attitude toward the desperate, albeit at a different time and a different place. The governor insisted that food and aid were readily available but that there was a need to determine if those pleading were constituents.

Her evocation of politics harks to the Yolanda post-crisis mess under a former DILG secretary who evoked parochial partisanship as a precondition to providing relief. His eventual declaration “Bahala kayo sa buhay ninyo!” is perhaps the most eloquent mark of his political DNA.

After releasing an abbreviated statement of concern where now along his public relations sorties is he, who, under Aquino, once headed these police forces and local officials who think it justified, if not convenient, to maim and kill the drought-afflicted starving instead of simply fulfilling promises of food and funds?

Where, indeed, is that Aquino alter ego, ironically one who headed the police and local government hierarchies, who promises more of the same under a platform called the “Tuwid na Daan?” Would that mean perpetuating ironies where the poor remain hungry and the Gini Coefficient widens the divide between the minority cacique class he represents and the multitude of impoverished he seeks votes from?

Snatching less than a handful from the public-relations millions spent to foist among the gullible a fraudulent and false facade of a drama-less politician, or perhaps even simply pinching a few bills and coins from the multimillion-peso coffers dedicated to destroying the reputations of rivals who offer change might have sufficed to feed Kidapawan’s poor.

But then again, bullets cost far less.

The trade-off founds the unfeeling callousness that explains the totally inappropriate, giddy and girlish giggling at the site of the bloody Luneta Massacre mere weeks into the Aquino administration in 2010. It also explains the warped celebration of the Zamboanga Siege that left innocents dead and homes razed.

It is the same that compelled a traditional politician to recklessly infect relief operations in Yolanda as a function of partisan and parochial family rivalries, thus, distorting priorities and going so far as to limit accountability by deliberately denying the number of casualties, even arguing with global media what was undeniably the truth.

Indeed, mindless murder is far more effective in permanently silencing the cries and pleas of the hungry. Better than having to confront the painful truth underlying economic falsehoods and failures the administration candidate seeks to perpetuate.