FINDING ANSWERS
Nearly nothing else may be as repulsive as the slaughter of helpless children like what happened in Cavite last week.
Watching TV news on the OFW mother describing the circumstances of the tragedy, one can feel the anguish she must have felt upon hearing on her cellphone her terrified kids pleading for their lives before dying of multiple stab wounds.
“Pa, huwag po, huwag po (please don’t, please don’t),” were the last words Virginia Dela Peña heard from her children ages 6, 8, 10, and 14 who were butchered by her live-in partner who committed suicide afterwards. She said jealousy and money problems ignited the rage of tricycle driver Felimon Escalona during the phone conversation she was having with him moments before the gruesome killings.
The tragedy may not be as worse as other horrific crimes committed against the most helpless members of our society, yet it strikes at the core of the anxieties dreaded by Overseas Filipino Workers working so far from home, single mothers who are compelled to entrust their kids to people who are not blood relatives, and women in general who are susceptible to violence, whether physical or psychological.
Are the senseless killings a reflection of so many failures in Philippine society? Could blame be put on the seemingly poor implementation of the law like RA 9262, the Anti-Violence Against Women and their Children Act supposed to protect the vulnerable members of Philippine society?
Is government at fault for being apparently unable to abide, in this particular case, by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, of which the Philippines is a signatory, which provides that “States Par-ties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child” as stated in Art. 6.2 of the UN General Assembly resolution?
With the grisly crime against the four kids, one could assume that only a person out of his mind or the criminally insane is capable of the dastardly act. Thus, could blame lie in our mental health situation? A 2021 report said the Department of Health “estimates that at least 3.6 million Filipinos are facing mental health issues… including depression, substance use disorders such as alcohol use disorder, and mood disorders like bipolar disorder.”
Should blame also lie in the current practice of allowing more Filipinos to work abroad? Every administration since the 1980s has hoped foreign employment would only be a stop-gap measure to keep our economy afloat and to enable people to survive financial hardships, and that the time will soon come when families would no longer have to be apart. But millions of Filipinos continue to live like modern-day gypsies. Go to the ends of the earth, there’s a Filipino.
The continuing exodus of Filipinos in search of greener pastures comes at a heavy price. Physical separation of parents from children and of husbands from wives led to rampant drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, infidelity and marital breakups, to name a few of the so-called “social costs” taking its toll on families of OFWs.
And besides the social costs is the reality that our country is forfeiting its chances of competing globally in many fields, from science and medicine to master carpentry, due to the loss of human capital especially our skilled workers and best minds.
There certainly is a pressing need to find answers to avoid another tragedy similar to the horrific killings in Cavite. Equally gruesome are the recent killings in Negros Oriental that took the lives of Gov. Roel Degamo and eight innocent civilians mowed down by automatic gunfire.
The Negros tragedy undoubtedly shows that a culture of impunity goes on without letup. All these years, uncertainty of punishment, or even of apprehension at least, emboldened criminals to strike from time to time.
As former DILG secretary, I’ve was asked in a recent TV interview about my thoughts on the issue of criminality. I reiterated what I’ve always been saying: The entire criminal justice system has to work efficiently. Its five pillars – police, prosecutors, judges, jails, and the community – must work relentlessly to identify, appre-hend, prosecute, convict and incarcerate offenders.
To deter crime and have a peaceful society, it must be ingrained in the public consciousness that crime prevention is everyone’s concern. Peace and order councils from the barangay to regional levels have to work effectively.
“The participation of the citizenry in peace and order is of critical importance,” says EO 309, issued November 11, 1987, that reorganized peace and order councils in the national, regional, provincial, city and municipal levels of government.
Thus, there’s no doubt all members of society need to act to deter crime. Let’s bear in mind what Robert Kennedy once said: “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves.”
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