The poor die poor.

Mang Pandoy is now dead.

The foremost symbol of poverty remained a symbol of poverty to the very end. He is so poor his family cannot even have him buried.

All those unkept promises. All those short-term support. All those tokens. All for naught.

He had started poor, and he had died poor. Was it his choice -- to die of tuberculosis, to have an indefinite interment?

This is how the government (and in extension, our politicians) treat our poor -- as pawns in their indefinite struggle to be at the top of the heap.

How magnanimous.