Hope for burn victims

Batas Mauricio

I CONGRATULATE Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robredo for their having won the May 2016 presidential and vice presidential elections, as attested to by the final tally made by our lawmakers sitting as members of the National Board of Canvassers.

This notwithstanding, I urge Robredo’s losing rival, Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr., to pursue his plan to file an election protest even if this is going to be another dragging and bruising fight in his hands. There is just too much evidence of cheating against him for him to simply accept the results that saw his initial lead of a million votes vanishing after a computer manipulation by Smartmatic.

Insofar as Duterte is concerned, our countrymen are now waiting for him to deliver on his promises, particularly on wiping our drug lords and criminal syndicates. For Robredo, let us pray her victory is not the Plan B of the losing Liberal Party which had been bruited about before May 9 as the Aquino government’s maneuver to oust Duterte.

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I was invited to a lunch tendered by the Physicians for Peace Philippines (PFP) last Thursday to see for myself how men and women whose bodies were burned and mutilated by fire in the not-too-distant past are coping with life.

And was I shocked to learn that despite the huge budget of the Department of Health yearly–the sum was P87.6 billion for 2015–it has no program to rehabilitate the victims, and help them return to the mainstream of social life! Of course, this neglect of many ailing Filipinos is a given, under the Aquino government, but burned victims should be given special treatment.

The reason, I was told by PFP country representative Lyne Abanilla, a veteran in socio-charitable work for the poor and the marginalized even when she was yet the vice president for advertising of the Manila Bulletin, is this: unlike other medical patients who easily recover, burn victims take much more to recover not only from the physical deformity of their bodies but from their depression as well.

I saw, for example, that even after their burned bodies have healed, the burn victims have to wrap themselves thoroughly when they have to meet other people, to hide their scars and their deformities, which maybe an unwelcome sight to many. This alone prevents them from trying to seek employment or engaging in gainful work or simply socializing as before.

This is a sure recipe for grave depression, which can often lead to unsavory results, like bad moods and tempers, suicide attempts which can be successful at times, or simply leading closeted or hermetic life styles. With no one–not even the DOH-eally dedicated to assist these victims, the outlook is often dim and, indeed, fatal.

Thus, I was really thankful–and so were the burn victims that I met, whose stories I shall try to write about here later–that PFP is trying to help them, medically and psychologically, like treating them to entertainment at sites. Maybe others who are much more blessed can share in this endeavor by calling Lyne, 0932 849 9212.

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Some of our readers in this column seem disturbed by an item we wrote about the sudden acceptance by our people of rudeness and of cursing and shouting invectives in public, which item obviously referred to incoming President Rodrigo Duterte. Our readers quoted a verse from the Bible, which I have been quoting quite often here, that citizens must obey their leaders at all times because that is God’s command.

I wish to assure everyone that whatever be Duterte’s conduct before and after he assumes the presidency, I will still strongly push for all Filipinos to subject themselves to his reign, for, indeed, that is a godly principle. It is against God’s commands to rise up and fight, and then oust, ala Edsa Revolution I and II, leaders who were clearly installed by divine direction.

However, I also maintain that as citizens who are concerned about what is happening to our country, we should be free to voice out our thoughts and observations about how our leaders, especially President Duterte, conduct themselves especially in public, and then pray urgently that God will guide and then ultimately change them towards godly directions, as the Bible verse we quoted here indicates.

Indeed, in the face of big challenges confronting not only Duterte but our own people as the Duterte government is ushered in by noon of June 30, 2016, the primordial objective of all Filipinos who believe in Jesus as God and Savior should be to invoke God’s grace and protection for our nation in the next six years.

Now that the inutile and inefficient Aquino government and its vindictive streak against its political enemies are becoming a thing of the past, and that a new government led by an action-oriented, even if wholly irreverent, president is taking over, there is an urgent need to make sure that God becomes the center of everything in our country, whatever we conceive God to be for each of us.

For Christian believers, the way to do this is to strengthen our faith in Jesus as God and Savior. This sounds simple enough but it will require a lot of discipline and hard work, and we can start by obeying the command: read the Bible everyday, study or meditate on it day and night, and carefully obey everything that is written in it every second of our lives.

Truly, a society that takes on the discipline of knowing the Word of God daily, and studying the nuances of that Word insofar as its application on its day-to-day living, and living out what the Word says all the days of their citizens’ lives, would be a society that is empowered in all its ways, including with financial and economic prosperity.

Citizens that acquaint themselves with the Word of God know that they should fear and love God all the time, and this would make them shun graft and corruption, avoid illegal transactions and drug deals, and serve only the interests of the people that they transact with. With this kind of an attitude, there will be more money for projects that benefit the whole country, especially the poor and the marginalized.

On the other hand, we are already witnesses to what citizens who do not have the Word of God in their hearts have made themselves of. They are blasphemers, money lovers, disrespectful of their parents and of all other peoples at the same time, and are capable of doing even the most devilish acts at the flick of a finger. Let us change all of these now, by knowing God through His Word.

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo. com