Alternative to violence: Running priest extols ‘Ka Bel’
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:29:00 05/22/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- Running priest Fr. Robert Reyes on Thursday extolled the late Anakpawis party-list Representative Crispin Beltran, and said that by his life and death, he offered a new alternative to the “violence of greed and power.”
“When the rest of society seems to explode with either senseless violence and equally violent thoughts, feelings and language from ‘shoot to kill,’ ‘beasts’ and ‘restore the death penalty,’ a man dies and ironically, in death, offers an alternative to violence: voluntary poverty and simplicity,” he said in an e-mailed statement.
Reyes, now with the Hong Kong-based Human Rights Commission, said that Beltran left “a legacy of contradiction and counter-witness.”
“He died a poor and simple politician. He died repairing his own leaking roof. He died working, serving and not being served,” he said.
“Ka Bel’s fall was a brief violent episode that ended one life but unleashed a challenge which may yet be the solution to the carefully camouflaged violence of greed and power,” he added.
Beltran, 75, who championed workers’ rights throughout his life, died on Tuesday from injuries after falling from the roof of their house while trying to repair a leak.
Reyes, who recalled meeting Beltran in several protest rallies of the urban poor, said that by his simple life and manner of death, Beltran was sending a message that cuts across religion, class and ideology.
“Workers are quietly mourning, militants as well. Oppressors and rulers cannot be numb. Ka Bel, yes a militant but more a simple and poor man is passing by, no less concerned and committed to changing and rejecting the superficiality, hypocrisy, insanity and sheer inhumanity of the love and worship of power and wealth,” he said.
“The simple, poor, once taxi driver turned worker leader is passing by. I salute him and more I allow him to challenge and even change me to be simpler and poorer for a freer, less violent and more just Philippines,” he added.
Beltran’s legacy has not been lost too on his colleagues, who not only extolled him but also agreed to grant financial aid to his grieving family.
South Cotabato Representative Darlene Custodio on Wednesday night moved that all members of the House shell out P5,000 each for the family of their deceased colleague. This was unanimously approved.
This is on top of the P5,000 that the minority bloc is collecting from its 23 members, she said.
The collection would cover the unpaid hospital bills of Beltran, as well as his funeral expenses, including the cost of transporting his body to Albay and back to Manila, according to Custodio.
“This is small compared to his contribution to Congress and to the Filipino nation,” she said in a phone interview, adding: “His family needs it more than anyone else in Congress at this point in time.”
Custodio also appealed to her richer colleagues to give more to the family of Beltran, who was the poorest in the chamber and lived in a mortgaged home in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan until his death.
|
