For the boys

The nation commemorates today (Monday) the valor of Filipinos who, along with their American comrades, put up a heroic but ultimately futile resistance to Japanese invading forces in Bataan. There is hardly a clan that does not have among its ranks a soldier or guerrilla who perished in or miraculously lived through the horrors of the war that culminated in the infamous death march to Tarlac. They were vigorous young men then, mere boys even, flush with Dylan Thomas’ “force that through the green fuse drives the flower,” but now, 70 years hence, they are on their last legs and ravaged by disease and the advancing years. And in what should serve as a continuing occasion of shame for the government, many of these war veterans are forced to live on not much more than the adrenalin surge of memory and the monthly pittance of P5,000 that constitutes their old-age pension.

Through the years Araw ng Kagitingan has been routinely observed with a commemorative ceremony at Mount Samat in Pilar, Bataan, with requisite speeches by the incumbent Philippine president and representatives of the United States and Japan, as well as a number of veterans, frail now, trotted out to complete the cast. In last year’s ceremony, Benigno Aquino III’s first as president, Japanese Ambassador Makoto Katsura delivered an apology in behalf of his country: “[L]et me reiterate my greatest tribute to all those who fought and fell, and my heartfelt apologies and deep sense of remorse over the damage caused by the Japanese military … during World War II, including the tragic Bataan death march.” Mr. Aquino himself lauded the veterans and said their “sacrifices” continued to be remembered. He proceeded to rattle off the government’s moves to show that the veterans’ “spirit of service” was being appreciated and reciprocated: among others, the upgrade of equipment and services at Veterans’ Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City, agreements with more hospitals nationwide where veterans and their families can receive P800 in subsidy for every day of confinement, and P1-million health insurance for qualified veterans. He said the government was also monitoring the implementation of the Filipino Veterans’ Equity Compensation Act signed in 2009 by US President Barack Obama. Under the better-than-nothing law—the fruit of the efforts of sympathizers in the US legislature and of lobbying by Filipino and American activists, as well as of the war veterans’ own hopes and fears (others having died without, so to speak, seeing the price tag on their wartime gallantry)—Filipino veterans are entitled to $9,000, and those who have taken American citizenship, $15,000. (According to a report issued by the US Embassy in Manila last February, the US Department of Veterans Affairs had paid over $221 million to some 18,530 veterans.)

Mr. Aquino likewise announced in the 2011 ceremony that a system instituted by the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO) had finally done away with “ghost pensioners,” resulting, he said, in savings of P4 billion that allowed the government to pay off 50 percent of its debts to about 30,000 veterans and to ensure the fast payment of pensions to those eligible. (Recall the intermittent complaints from veterans and their families of late pension payments and of difficulty in collecting due to a change in distribution procedures.) We wonder whether the system is holding, and more important, whether the purported end of the reprehensible “ghost” practice that doubtless enriched crooked parties in the military and elsewhere has anything to do with the cutback in the 2012 appropriation for the PVAO’s “personal services” fund, from which the veterans’ pensions are taken. The slash was not inconsiderable—from P12,763,067,000 in 2011 to the present P7,188,125,000—and we wonder whether the pensions for the remaining veterans (23,580, PVAO administrator Ernesto Carolina told the Senate in August 2011) would not suffer for it. We hope that the amount taken from the fund was directed to another worthy allocation and not to the usual milking cows that fattened the military brass, whether coming or going.

It’s a shame that this day that honors those who fought their country’s invaders with grit and valor remains an occasion for haranguing the government on the fundamental matter of their pension. It’s tragic that, after 70 years, “time [having] ticked a heaven round the stars,” independence, financial and otherwise, remains beyond their grasp.