Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. lofted a trial balloon Monday. He may make a 2016 presidential run, said the 47-year- old actor-governor-turned-senator. Ma-aga pa na man. English doesn’t catch all the nuances of the word garapal.
“If you can’t raise a billion pesos, why run?” rags-to-riches 64-year-old Sen. Manuel Villar told Reuters. Villar lobbed President Joseph Estrada’s impeachment to the Senate without catching a breath after his opening prayer. He owns a P48-billion real estate firm and dealt himself into the race. A less-affluent President Benigno Aquino trashed Villar in the 2010 polls.
“I dislike millionaires,” writer Mark Twain joked. “But it’d be dangerous to offer me the position.”
Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. frets at “the starting line”. He churns out press releases on everything except last year’s $353.6 million fine by the US Federal Court. Bongbong tried to smuggle paintings from judicially contested hearings, the 9th circuit court fumed. Marcos Jr. ducks.
Who of our kids meanwhile will die ? Infant death rates here stagnated at 19 per 100,000 births. Compare that to Taiwan’s six. The toll resembles that of Ecuador. Yes, the Ecuador that former US national security contractor Edward Snowden, accused of espionage, would sneak into and shake off pursuing US federal posses.
How many under-5-year-old infants will slump into premature graves? Here, 25 for every 1,000, a UN Interagency Group reports. We’re bracketed with oil-flush Iran ruled by ayatollahs. It is 7 for Malaysia.
And how many will achieve what the Psalmist writes? “Seventy is the sum of our years, eighty if we are strong” Don’t ask Revilla. In Cavite, functional illiteracy stood at 9 percent, the last time the Philippine Human Development Report ( PHDR) looked. And 7 percent lacked “improved water sources.” Life expectancy today for Filipinos and Guatemalans is 73, the World Health Organization estimates. A Singaporean can live to 82.
But lust for power blinds. Today’s “candidates” plot well past midnight on how to grab political advantage.
“Let me have men about me that are fat, / Sleek-headed men such as sleep a-nights,” Shakepeare’s Ceasar mutters to Antony “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; / He thinks too much…”
A study on the Philippines, Brazil, India, South Africa and Guatemala found that “Interventions during first two years of life (of a child) “are likely to result in substantial gains” in height, schooling, the research journal “Lancet” ( March 28, 2013 ) reported. They “give some protection from adult chronic disease. Adverse trade offs are few.”
How would Bongbong react? In Ilocos Norte, the poorest 10 percent make do with three centavos of every peso while the richest get 28 centavos, PHDR says. And that doesn’t include secret dollar accounts in the Virgin Island.
Tracking of 3,080 mothers and infants from 243 Cebu barangays partly anchors this analysis. The late Fr. Wilhelm Flieger SVD crafted the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey at the University of San Carlos Office of Population Studies in 1983
“Yesterday’s infants are today’s adults,” Viewpoint reported ( PDI / June 25, 2012 ). “Some are parents and hold down jobs. There are school dropouts. A number have died and 136 moved out. One is an OFW worker in Iceland. In 2011, San Carlos completed its examination of new pregnancies and births among once-1983 infants. This “makes CLHNS a three-generation study.”
Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the new analysis covers 8,362 participants in three age periods: 0-2 years; 2 years to midchildhood’; and midchildhood to adult stage. Brazil failed to track 17 percent of infants, studied by Universidade Federal de Pelotas, into adulthood. “ Guatemala and Cebu showed marked growth failure in early childhood. South Africa and India showed intermediate patterns.
The bottom line for decisive intervention is the first 24 months of a child’s life. “Act there,” Cesar Victoria of Brazil stressed earlier. Dividends in a child’s health dwindle in the third year onwards.
“Our findings suggest that interventions to increase birth weight and linear growth during the first 2 years of life are likely to result in substantial gains in height and schooling,” Lancet adds.
Malnourished pregnant mothers result in stunting of kids, lower attained schooling, reduced adult income. Indeed, “stunting today is the most prevalent nutritional challenge in developing nations,” the G8 summit heard mid-June at Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. Worldwide, 165 million children are affected.” (In Philippine kindergarten and primary classes, 562,262 pupils are “severely wasted.”) The World Bank boosted this year’s funding for child nutrition from $230 million to $600 million. The European Union pledged an extra $500 million for related projects.
Except for Sub-Saharan Africa, mortality and under-nutrition are falling substantially in most parts of the world. New targets are now being formulated to replace the 2015 Millennium Development Goals. This five country study “provides strong justification for the proposal of a new goal, namely a reduction in stunting,” adds the Lancet report. This would replace the present target which is narrowly constricted to whittling down underweight .
Filipino politics is a chaotic sound chamber. The most strident voices erupt from would-be 2016 candidates who clone yesterday’s trapos.They drown out the whimper of vulnerable infants and emaciated mothers. And that silencing guts our common humanity.