The literature of hunger

The Social Weather Station conducted a survey and found some 3.4 million families experienced hunger during the last three months.

And so, everybody said, there was hunger in the country, especially in Luzon and Metro Manila. The number of hungry people decreased in the Visayas and there was no change in Mindanao. Is there hunger in the land? I don't believe so, especially in the context of people starving because there's no food to eat.

But being a political season, the President announced a one billion peso feeding program to calm down international news reports.

There's no hunger. Probably, some people surveyed included some diabetics purposely starving themselves before taking blood tests or others were practicing the Lenten ritual of abstinence and fasting. Is allocating one billion pesos correct for the feeding program? No! We will be lucky if one-fourth of the amount will go to the really food hungry people and not to those administering it, some amounts to be diverted to some political kitty. They are hungry too. For money.

***

The President, too, should have long mastered the Chinese literature of hunger. Give a man rice and fish and he will have his meal. Teach him to plant rice and teach him to fish and he will feed himself throughout his life.

The President should have made food security the center-piece of her administration, making people produce food cheaper than those produced by neighboring countries competing with ours.

Unless the President does this, the time is not far when we will be dependent on imported food. That is the time of real hunger.

Every leader's obligation is to feed his people. The way our CARP law is being implemented, food production is adversely affected. Hungry people present the strongest political issue to drive out an incumbent, especially by agrarian reform beneficiaries.

Want Pangandaman to act? Stage a hunger strike. Then get international media support. Local media is more discerning.

***

Hunger, not just for food, is the strongest issue on everything. Mark Twain wrote that "Hunger for self approval is the Mother of all Passion." All the scandals in society stemmed from the hunger for love. Not food.

We are all victims of the hunger for love.

Our high school teachers taught us William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" that says "A dog starving at the Master's gate / Predicts the ruin of the state." Blake wrote that more than 200 years ago.

If he wants, Satur Ocampo with a red mark on his breast can borrow Blake's other line: "A robin red breast in a cage / Puts Heaven to a rage." That is if Satur believes in Heaven.

There is no hunger. During the war, people ran and were not able to produce food but if there were deaths they were caused by bullets, not by starvation.

If the monkeys in the forests can survive without producing food, why not man?

***

The biggest Hunger March was in 1932 in London, led by Hal Wannington, head of the National Union of Unemployed Workers.

The purpose of hunger strikes is to call the attention of the government to a cause. Ever since no one died in a hunger strike because in the evenings they also eat. Hunger strikes are just a plain show.

Leaders must not panic on hunger strikes. Assign a physician, nurses, and a policeman "for their safety" but it is for the purpose that they cannot sneak out and eat. On the third day, they will surrender.

I am not against hunger strikes. We need these also to arouse action from calloused public officials.

What made the suffragettes win their cause was their hunger strike although what became popular that is never forgotten was their tricky slogan that disarmed the men, "Up with the skirts, down with the pants."

The real hunger was the so-called "Hungry Forties" during the "Potato Famine" that caused the mass migration of a million people from Ireland to the U.S.

***

If we hunger it must be for the Bread of Life.

I quote the Bible on this. "I am the Bread of Life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger. And he who believeth in me shall never thirst."

This is what GMA wants? Come to her.

The problem is with Pangandaman there at DAR, the food security program of Joseph Marañon cannot succeed.

***

So, the mayors have acted declaring Pangandaman persona non grata? This will depend on how these officials play their cards. If they know how, they can demand, especially in an election season like this.

I have the feeling, Negros Occidental will deliver more votes to the Opposition than to the Administration. The President can turn the tide though.*

back to top