Ka Bel: Not a Senseless, Silly Death

MANILA, Philippines — It would be so easy to dismiss the accidental death of Rep. Crispin “Ka Bel” Beltran as senseless, silly even, as one blogger put it. What a way to go — falling off a roof! — for a man who fought and survived repressive regimes. The thinking by some seems to be that dying by an assassin’s bullet, like many of Ka Bel’s friends and comrades, would have left a deeper impact on the public and would have lend Ka Bel’s death that profound political, perhaps heroic, significance fitting for somebody who raised hell against oppression and inequality practically all his life.

A simple life: Is this the house of a congressman?

Ka Bel died because he was an honest man. He was poor, yes, but precisely because he was simple and honest. These values are the core of his politics. These values compelled him to wake up at 4 in the morning to tend to his garden. Yesterday, these same values made him go up the roof of his house to check for leaks.

How many congressmen would dare do what he did, both in the halls of Congress and in their households? Up to his death, Ka Bel remained what he had always been — a man whose political tenacity is matched only by his awe-inspiring dedication to his family (especially to his wife) and to an utterly simple, almost spartan, life in a country where members of Congress often behave like they own the world.

For a man so principled, and so loved and respected, no death could be more fitting than this one. (Carlos Conde/pinoypress.net)