Is the raucous 2007 election campaign drowning out the reporting of issues that matter for the lives of ordinary people?

Reports on "Genuine Opposition" producing smear "doggie-in-the-window jingles to Kris Aquino's marital troubles jammed recent headlines and programs.

"Scandals are not like bread," the Nigerian proverb says. "There is never a shortage." Sad but true. But are these accounts the outer limits of our debate on national issues?

The inside pages, sometimes, provide a stark contrast to this penury.

Read this brief story, buried below the fold, under a one column head: Post-harvest losses on rice - from shoddy milling, decrepit storage to rats and pests - came to 4.9 million metric tons. The waste could have fed 13 million people for a year, Senator Ralph Recto said.

That's roughly the population of Metro Manila, with two regions tossed in.

Who was trying to save the rice? Nobody? Or was there simply no space or airtime for such accounts?

Bacolod, Davao and Cebu, meanwhile, hosted "Operations Smile". From Brazil, Australia and the US, 24 doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists flew in, paying for their fares.

Alongside 35 Filipino counterparts, they operated, for free, on harelip deformities afflicting hundreds of kids who came from the poorest of families. Citizens provided lodgings for the team.

"You gave back to these children their smile - and their lives," Cardinal Ricardo Vidal told the team after they lifted up, from the operating table, the 253rd kid in three days.

Indeed, "an act of kindness will keep you warm for three winters."

Was a "tithe of time"?

Tithing is the age-old practice of setting aside 10 percent of one's goods for the Lord. Today, many associate it exclusively with trimming pay packets, by a tenth, for what the French call clochards: life's beaten.

Former Science Secretary Filemon "Jun" Uriarte and his wife Jean dub tithing as "experimental generosity." It is anchored in a Divine dare, they claim:

"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house, and try me in this, says the Lord of hosts. Shall I not open for you the floodgates of heaven, to pour down blessings upon you without measure?"

(Malachai 3 /10)

"Try me." This is a gentle gauntlet, Secretary Uriarte says. Share. Give. And then see for yourselves: Who will outdo who in generosity? "Full measure, pressed down, and spilling over," was the standard offered by the Teacher for even those who dip tentatively into "experimental generosity."

In his article "The Tithe of Time," a friend of many years writes: time is a gift "but it cannot be all mine." We must examine our lives to see if our time enhanced the integrity of creation. Did we refuse to see the largeness of life and the interconnectedness of things. Did our hearts shut out the poor and deprived? 'The unexamined life,' as Socrates said, 'is not worth living.'

"The tithe of time is symbolically ten percent of the year," Francisco Albano adds. Both the poor and the rich can pay this tithe. We offer that to God to remind us that all time is his."

The tithe of time can be subtle. Clearly, the medical teams gave that tithe when, dropping cash-paying patients, they made time heal the poor. Not too obvious but just valid were volunteers: from those who kept records to those who consoled mothers whose ill-fed kids were too weak for surgery.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Columnist Stephen Klaidman asks in column "Nagging Questions On Giving;" "Is it a rejection of humanity every time we avert our eyes from a beggar? Even if we give him something, why can't we meet his gaze and accept his 'thank you' without embarrassment?

This is not to say that those of us who are better off are a nasty and venal lot, he adds. "It just means we all have the capacity to share more than we do. It's not just only money, but time and simple human warmth."

(E-mail: juan_mercado@boholchronicle.com)