The lack of formidable healthcare and decisive economic recovery plan will surely lead us to death, if not thru Covid-19, then by hunger. And if you rise to complain, maybe thru the anti-terrorism law or under the revived death penalty law as proposed by the President in yesterday’s State of the Nation Address.
Death penalty is the least that people should hear at the time they were facing real death and hunger in this time of the pandemic.
What we need are solid guarantees to our constitutional rights. What the country urgently needs are laws and measures that would address joblessness, loss of incomes and economic recession.
A death penalty imposed in the manner law enforcers disrespect human rights even during a mass inside the Quiapo Church is something to worry about as justice, we believe, is better served with fairness and compassion rather than by coercion.
If the President and his minions are still clueless on how we can get out of the current pandemic and ensuing economic crisis that we have right now, then they should not threaten the people further with more acts of killing. This nation needs more signs of life, not more death on the horizon.
The economy likewise needs a new breath of life not from the failed free market but from the state itself. The Bayanihan 2, with its measly fund of less than P200 billion, is clearly inadequate to weather the worst economic recession that we and the whole world are facing.
This glaring lack of a bold yet feasible plan, we are afraid, will surely lead us to more deaths. And that is criminal neglect on the part of the government itself. Now, who wants death imposed upon himself?
Finally, pursuing a better normal under a whole nation approach will never be possible with the government imposing restrictions to union’s democratic participation in governance, which to us, is the worst form of social distancing.
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