Barring a last-minute miracle, Filipino migrant Mary Jane Veloso will be shot by a firing squad in Indonesia today.
Our top officials and even ordinary citizens have done much to appeal to the Indonesian government to spare Veloso’s life on humanitarian grounds. The President and Vice President have spoken with their respective counterparts, even as we wonder why they have not acted with equal urgency when there was still time.
Online petitions have been circulated among Filipinos here and worldwide to rally support for Veloso. She is not a scheming drug smuggler, but somebody who wanted work but was manipulated, and then was unable to defend herself.
Veloso a 30-year-old mother of two, has reportedly accepted her fate. Her family has been allowed some time with her. She told her son to be proud of her when she is gone, because she died to take the fall for others.
The story is that Veloso was lured into Indonesia under false pretenses, and that another person sewed the drugs into her suitcase without her knowledge.
The next tragedy was when she could not explain all these in court because she – and the lawyer assigned to her—hardly knew which words to say to tell her story.
Veloso’s story is haunting because it is one of desperation. She looked into other means of earning money to support her family because she could not find anything here. This is a common thread shared among the millions who have decided to leave the Philippines and try their luck elsewhere. The government, across many administrations, has been unable to provide enough jobs for its citizens that would make them stay.
This sounds inconsistent with the government’s claim that the lot of the common man is improving. Certainly, there is growth in the economy; the GDP is growing. The question is how fairly the income is distributed among the people, how much access the people have to resources that would empower them to improve their stations, and how viable the opportunities for upward mobility are.
It is hardly surprising that many politicians are riding on the issue to give a glimpse of how compassionate they are and how they equally despise the system that drives Filipinos like Veloso away to take great risks.
These politicians should be told that they have a hand in the rotten system.
This is a plea for our leaders to acknowledge that the exodus of hapless workers must be minimized, if not stopped, and this will only be possible if more and better options are available here. It is their job to create these options.