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The last time I felt this adrenalin surge was People Power,? my friend mused over post-fight drinks. He cheered himself hoarse as Manny Paquiao cut Miguel Cotto to ribbons to bag a seventh world title. So did most of us.
?Pacman didn?t just carve a niche in boxing history,? he added reflectively. ?He restored some of the self respect that Ferdie, Erap and Gloria stripped this country of. I?m not a shrink... So I can?t explain how Paquiao did that. Can you??
I pass. Sure, people were cheering for one of our own. But doesn?t the applause indicate that below the yells is ?a deep hunger and thirst? for authentic heroes?
We?re a people repeatedly betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. The hawkers range from soused Presidents, suborned congressmen, cops who salvage, castrated Ombudsmen to tycoons astride extorted coconut levies or pampered cigarette factories.
Still, People Power did cashier Ferdie and Erap. Could it do that with Gloria? There?s less than a year before elections. The surveys caution that people prefer to render their judgement then.
For now, though, another question festers: What next? No. This is not Aling Dionisia?s query on whether Pacman should quit now, when he?s way, way ahead. ?Hindi ako bobo,? Paquiao told Time magazine.
But will this Pacman booster shot fizzle? Or will it translate, gradually but steadily, into willingness by ordinary citizens to grapple with nitty-gritty problems of shoddy governance?
The track record is not too promising. After People Power I, we decamped on the sidelines. That left Corazon Aquino almost alone to beat back wave after wave of coup plotters, with Juan Ponce Enrile and Gringo Honasan leading the charge.
Nor did people keep, after People Power II, a tight leash on Gloria, the First Gentleman and their cabal. So she sprang from the slammer a President, convicted for plunder, under our uncomplaining noses. She bequeathed thereby, on generations of Filipinos yet to come, the sorry lesson: Crime pays.
See the Paquiao euphoria in the context of critical national issues. Look, for instance, at hunger. ?Pagkain sa bawat mesa? (?Food for every table?), President Arroyo solemnly vowed.
But 41 out of every 100 Filipino families today consider themselves ?food-poor,? the September 2009 Social Weather Stations survey found. That means about 7.5 million families must skip meals, as Paquiao did when he was a cigarette vendor.
Hunger interlocks with poverty. And the proportion of Filipinos who are considered poor, under this administration ranged from 46 percent to 66 percent in SWS surveys from March 2001 to February 2009.?
?To a people famished and idle, the only form in which God dares to appear is work and the promise of food,? Mahatma Ghandi once said.
About 11 million here are jobless. And over 6.6 million are underemployed. Many hold down poor quality jobs. Take-home pay never matches the price spikes. ?Our economy is not able to generate productive employment for our growing labor force,? UP economist Arsenio Balisacan notes.
Thus the 2009 ?Global Hunger Index? is crafted by the International Food Policy Research Institute. This new yardstick pegs us at 13.2? ahead of Myanmar but lagging behind Thailand and Malaysia.
For many Filipinos, food is synonymous with rice. The controversial Canadian aide Michael Koncz scrambled when his boss, Manny Paquiao, waved away rice-pilaf on the hotel menu. Pacman wanted steaming white rice.
So did my four-year-old granddaughter in Stockholm. She eyed the potatoes that her Swedish mother served and asked: ?Do we have rice??
But wobbly rice production has been savaged by recent typhoons. ?I don't see us importing more than 2 million tons this year,? Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap says. ?That would be tops already.? It sure is. That embed us further as the world largest rice importer.
Headlines speculate on a future brawl between Manny Paquiao and Floyd Mayweather. But for a look at the future, go to the inside pages. They carry ?duller?but often significant stories. Take the 6th International Rice Genetics Symposium in Los Bañnos. The world?s top 700 rice scientists are taking stock of rapid advances in rice genomics. Their work will be seen on dinner tables of our grandchildren, long after Paquiao will have hung up his gloves.
Their technical jargon can put us off. But Thai Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, who addressed the symposium, summed the issue up in an earlier World Food address.
?There is a new dangerous dimension to hunger. The very systems that enable us to feed the world are threatened. We must, therefore, look beyond the forests, grasslands and the oceans. Let us examine that complex world that underpins those systems. We are devastating our genetic legacy at rates that can only be described as suicidal.?
Filipinos cheer Pacquiao for his ring achievements. They should prod citizens to take on long neglected duties in addressing national issues, hunger among them. For too long, we?ve waited for men on white chargers. There are none.
Our cheers for Pacman surge from a hunger and thirst for justice, spelt out first on the Mount of Beatitudes.
