Open Letter to President Benigno Simeon Aquino

A (Heartbreak) Valentine for President Benigno Simeon Aquino III

February 14, 2014

Dear Mr. President,

This is not a letter of love, but of its disappointments on the side of those devastated by Yolanda. You shouldn't be surprised – it adds to the heartache. You didn't even warn enough about Yolanda, or fought to spare the innocents, who if they did not lose their lives, will forever be haunted by the howling terror and the icy waves of death. Perhaps you failed to understand. Others looking into your eyes do too, and much time has passed. Where are the images of homes and schools and churches smashed to pieces? Of lifeless children in the arms of their loved ones? Of the wounded in body and spirit who struggled to stay alive wihout food, without water, without a government?

In your eyes we see instead the cold calculation so enamored of corrupt officials and big businessmen who see opportunity in the plight of the people. Millions of peasants lost their crops and their granaries are empty; hunger stalks urban and rural areas. Yet the outpouring of aid from around the world is disappearing into the pockets of the venal officialdom. Others pretend to help but violate our dignity and national sovereignty, such as the US military and its allies who seem to want to garrison in the country. Meanwhile, the post-Yolanda reconstruction is geared towards infrastructure, not the real needs of the majority who rely on the land, and a sure bonanza for big business, not the poor. Even the buildings and resorts that would tower, for that is what the government and its cronies plan, will make graveyards of the communities of the urban poor who are banned by the No Build Zone policy.

Know this, Mr. President. We who survived Yolanda are not courting your attention. We do not even want your love, only your sense of responsibility. You should have reassured us of your love in saving the lives of the many before Yolanda came, and in staying with us in the nightmarish months of trying to pick up the pieces after the catastrophe. Today we refuse to offer you our hands, for we no longer feel the ties that bind you and the people, and you must prove you are still worthy of us because the music died last November 8.

You are not a stranger to the irreparable strain that could occur between a government and the people. When your father was assassinated, the people stood by his side and said that he was not alone, it was the government that killed him that was alone and had to go. Now it has been so many months and you refuse to stand by the side of the people who suffered Yolanda. You turn away from the needy who press for food, jobs, housing and social services. Monumentally, irredeemably, inexorably unmoved by more than ten thousand dead, hundreds of thousands displaced, millions who face starvation! You are increasingly alone.

You probably know, too, Mr. President, that the time comes when the tears stop and the spurned becomes the unforgiving. Maybe you already know all too well that after the tears, love ends with a departure for the offending party.

No love lost,

People Surge