Coincidence or not the Congress’s release of its richest legislators came out at the same time that the Social Weather Station (SWS) released its findings on the state of the country’s poverty level.
There was little surprise that Manny Pacquiao continued to be the richest congressman with well over P1 billion in net worth followed by former First Lady Imelda Marcos.
While one can count with his or her fingers the people who can begrudge, if at all, Pacquiao for being the richest, the fact that his brother and wife have won their respective bids for public office makes one question his sincerity in not enriching his family beyond his mega-million dollar fights which continue even while he sits pretty in Congress.
That’s not to say he invites the same level of disgust that Imelda Marcos continues to provoke among those who continue to remember the brazen shame she and her late dictator husband brought to the country during their more than two decades worth of martial law rule and how she and her family continue to be among the most influential in their respective spheres of political bailiwicks.
Dovetail the Congress’s annual list of its richest legislators with that of the SWS survey which showed that there are 3.9 million hungry Filipinos in the first quarter of this year or about 600,000 in the same period last year.
In the Visayas where Cebu is situated, the number of families experiencing “moderate hunger” (defined by SWS as having experienced hunger once or a few times) rose from 13 percent to 15 percent while those experiencing severe hunger or those who experienced hunger often and always went down from 2.7 percent to 1.3 percent.
The recent Mega Cebu Candidates Forum prominently showed in its video the fact that Cebu has the highest incidence of poverty in the country despite its booming economy.
Regardless of the rhetoric of entrepreneurs, the bottom line remains that wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a few or the “one percent” while the majority wallow in poverty.
One of the more obvious solutions, according to some officials, is to spread development and investments to the countryside.
This is one reason the incoming administration of Cebu Governor -elect Hilario Davide III has the monumental task of spreading that wealth among Cebu towns and cities which he proposed to do, in part, by promoting agriculture through the farmer-scientist program of his uncle, a Ramon Magsaysay awardee.
With a sound program of infrastructure development and tourism growth, it is hoped that more Cebuanos decide to remain in their towns and help enrich not only themselves but their neighbors.
Growth doesn’t just belong in the big cities but in the countryside whose promise remains unfulfilled. It’s up to the incoming Capitol administration to realize that promise.