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.

Monday take on the Thursday stand-off

Several days have passed now since that fateful Thursday stand-off at the Manila Peninsula. That very day, as I monitored newsfeeds from the boobtube, the radio, and the Web, I also looked around Technorati to see what bloggers were saying about the mutiny.

Many were still holding their voices on what was happening, but I was already seeing various vicious comments about Philippine Senator Antonio Trillanes IV and Brigadier General Danilo Lim, former commander of the country's elite First Scout Ranger Regiment.

This is saddening to note, that these commenters have access and all to the web but can't seem to see the bigger picture into which the puzzle of the failed mutiny of Trillanes et al. fits in.

Let me share anyway what my fellow blogger Paeng had also shared -- a much better explanation of what had transpired, courtesy of the much-admired sociologist, Professor Randy David. Don't forget to visit, too, the renegade soldiers' instant website.