Advice to ‘punerarya’ owners

By Al S. Mendoza

 

FUNERAL parlors are up in arms:  They are losing money.

Come again?

How can they lose money when there is now a corpses galore?

But then, look again: The oversupply of dead no longer make embalmers rich.

While it is obvious that killings now abound all across the archipelago, it does not automatically mean though that cash registers are ringing constantly at packed funeral parlors.

For, it is now common knowledge that police victims are mostly drug, poor outlaws.

Did Digong not promise eradicating drug-related criminality in three to six months after he occupies Malacañang on June 30?

He is no liar, you know.

Unlike the Palace occupants before him, he keeps his promise.

“You destroy the children of this country and I will kill you,” Digong had promised.

With drug pushers seemingly hard-headed as to continue destroying Digong’s “children,” killings go on unabated.

But to repeat: Many of the dead are deemed drug dealers, felled mainly by police bullets.

Some, mostly the avowed human rights activists, have cried violation of due process.

They may have a point as some killings could be rub-outs instead of shootouts.

A rub-out is when a suspect/plain citizen is killed—the victim presumed to be a police asset who knew too much about illegal police operations.

Better to silence him to prevent him from ratting.

But Digong isn’t a fool not knowing this.

If the President should soon order police involved in rub-outs-cum-shootouts investigated, be not surprised.

He knows a criminal policeman when he sees one.

It is almost a given that mostly, the victims come from the poor folk, from the dregs of society.

And the victim is either a drug user or a drug pusher.

Because the victims are usually poor—both small-time drug peddlers and marginalized drug users—their bodies could be hardly retrieved by their relatives.

Many of their kin are also too scared to show up, for fear they’d be tagged in cahoots with their dead relatives.

And so seemingly—and morbidly—the unclaimed cadavers are left “to rot” to the detriment of funeral parlor owners, who couldn’t collect what’s due them.

What can you squeeze from the dirt-poor?

Tragically, “punerarya” owners couldn’t close shop that easily.

How could they?

With unclaimed bodies crowding their shop, how could they start a new business?

Perhaps, they could sell the cadavers wholesale at medical schools for their doctor-students?

Or better yet, dump all the bodies at Manila Bay?

If they get caught, they could always run to Digong for cover, citing President Duterte’s campaign promise:  “I will fatten the fishes of Manila Bay.”

For all they know, it might even merit them a medal of valor for being good soldiers of the President.

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments