Improving lives is the real measure of success

Simone De Beauvoir warned: “If you live long enough, you’ll see every victory turn into defeat.” Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is obviously going through this existential turn.

The value of any achievement is not to be measured by how it has made the person bigger than himself. Rather, the true meaning of one’s success lies in the way it has improved the lives of others. GMA has failed the Filipino people. The high and ever-increasing poverty incidence in the country is an incontrovertible fact.

Ten years, several billions of pesos, and a rare opportunity of being in power and finally uplift the lives of the poor have been lost. Thus, I have yet to meet a man or woman or child who says that the presidency of GMA has improved their lives.

Our books say that tragedy is of two kinds: one is caused by God; the other, by the wrong decisions of men. I say there is only one. The rice crisis and the terrible misery it wrought upon the Filipino people will forever be a blot on the former president’s regime.

For now, since GMA has practically the best lawyers in the country to defend her, she will win in the cases against her. While I have always thought that the law should favor the oppressed, it is obvious that, except in very few cases, our prison system is only for the poor.

But it is not for the courts to make the final judgment. It is history that will judge GMA. The problem is, her story has come to an end. GMA is history. For history has given its verdict a long time ago: when the Filipinos chose change over hubris to “rule” this country. Ask any nine-year old what she thinks when she hears the name of the former president.

—CHRISTOPHER RYAN MABOLOC,

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