Manila - The suicide of a 12-year-old girl who has lost hope about her family's chances of rising out of poverty has become more than just a sad and shocking story in the Philippines.
The tragedy has turned into an indictment of the government's spotty anti-poverty campaign and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's often-snooty claim that her administration was making the lives of millions of impoverished Filipinos better.
Mariannet Amper was a Grade 6 pupil in a public school in the southern city of Davao, 1,020 kilometres south of Manila. She lived in a shanty without electricity or running water with her parents and a younger brother. Five other siblings live with relatives.
On November 2, Mariannet tied a rope around her neck and hanged herself, despondent that her family could hardly make ends meet and were often without money to buy food.
The news about the suicide broke out as Arroyo and top government officials were enjoying a hearty meal while holding an anti-poverty workshop at a posh hotel in Manila.
During the meeting, Arroyo expressed satisfaction that the government was making headway in its efforts to reduce poverty.
'The common people are now feeling the benefits of a growing economy,' she said. 'The implementation of the much-needed tax reforms contributed to the strengthening of the peso and increase in investments.'
While officials said Mariannet's case was isolated, it has revealed a flaw in the government's rosy proclamations of a booming economy - the prosperity is hardly trickling down to the masses where it is direly needed.
Days after Mariannet's suicide, police investigators recovered under her pillow a diary and a letter addressed to a public service television programme asking for a new pair of shoes and school bag, and steady jobs for her mother and father.
In the last two entries in her diary about two weeks before she took her life, Mariannet lamented that she and her brother had been absent from school and they could not go to church because they had no money for fare and their father was suffering from a fever.
'It seemed as if we were absent from school for a month now,' she wrote in her diary. 'We don't count our absences anymore. I hardly noticed that Christmas is fast approaching.'
Isabelo, Mariannet's father, said that the night before she hanged herself, his daughter asked him for 100 pesos (2.32 dollars) for a school project.
An unskilled construction worker, Isabelo said he had no money to give to Mariannet because he was unemployed. His wife, who earns 50 pesos a day, working part-time repacking noodles in a nearby factory, also had no amount to spare.
The Amper family is just one of millions of impoverished households in the Philippines still waiting to feel the benefits of an appreciating peso against the US dollar, the fastest economic growth in 20 years and increasing foreign investments.
According to United Nations data, more than 50 per cent of the Philippines' 88 million people live on less than 2 dollars a day. A nationwide survey conducted by a local polling firm in September also showed that 21.5 per cent of Filipino families suffer involuntary hunger, up from 19 per cent in November 2006.
Days after Mariannet's suicide, Arroyo ordered the release of an additional 1 billion pesos to beef up the government's anti-poverty program and 'create new impetus for the national effort to win the anti-poverty battle.'
Health Secretary Francisco Duque said the government was doubling its efforts to address poverty and hunger.
'This government is focused on anti-poverty and anti-hunger programmes and we'll just have to work a little bit more so that incidents like this won't be repeated,' he said.
But in an apparent bid to deflect criticism away from the Arroyo administration, Duque urged authorities to look deeper into the cause of Mariannet's suicide, including possible pathological conditions.
A senior education official also said the suicide could have been avoided if Mariannet's parents had been able to instill stronger values on their children, while Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral said families should practice family planning to help them get out of poverty.
Outside the government office which he is guarding in Novaliches district in Quezon City, security guard Anacleto Rom can only sigh as he ponders how to feed his four children from his take-home pay of 6,000 pesos every month.
'The prices of rice, bread, vegetables, noodles, chicken meat, fish continue to rise almost every week,' he said. 'How do you expect me to feed my children, much more send them to school?'
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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