A mess of our making

A mess of our making


Posted 11:04pm (Mla time) Mar 13, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 14, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


RAUL Gonzalez says he cannot understand the fuss over PERC's ranking of the Philippines as the second most corrupt country in Asia. "We should just disregard that. That is a conclusion of people who are holier than thou. Even the United Nations has corruption. Even the UN secretary general is charged with corruption."

Gonzalez is the justice secretary. There and then, you see why there is no justice in this country.

So what if corruption thrives in other parts of the world, or governing bodies? It does not excuse our own. That, of course, is a favorite Filipino pastime-citing others' iniquity to exculpate ours. It isn't just Gonzalez's favorite pastime, it is most Filipino officials'. That was the argument of the generals when one of their own, Carlos Garcia, was haled to court for stealing millions of pesos from the AFP: the civilian government was far dirtier.

Well, if so, then let us prosecute the guilty civilian officials as well. Why should that excuse Garcia, or lighten his guilt? The same is true of the UN secretary: If he is corrupt-though clearly Gonzalez has a future in comedy suggesting that Kofi Annan is no better than Jose Pidal-then let the world hound him and punish him. Why should the fact that he has been charged with corruption make us forget that GMA(Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) is charged with making this country the second most corrupt in Asia?

Which is the other point: The UN has not been classified as the second most corrupt anything; the Philippines has. That suggests an epic scale of pillage. As someone quipped last week in a text message, shortly before Diosdado Macapagal took office, we were second only to Japan in economic potential. Shortly after his daughter, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, took office, we were second only to Indonesia in corruption. That took less than half a century to accomplish. It's the kind of joke that hurts to laugh.

But what is particularly bothersome about Gonzalez's suggestion that we just ignore the PERC findings is not its fantastic absurdity but the absurd reality that we are in fact practicing it. We are routinely ignoring corruption, great or small, but particularly great: the bigger the theft is, the more it disappears, or becomes acceptable. Outside looking in, the one astonishing thing that has happened to this country over the last decade or so is not that it has plumbed to new depths of venality but that no one seems unduly bothered by it.

No uncontrollable public outrage and a demand for an accounting have arisen over PERC's revelations. Which is the even more fundamental difference between other countries and us. It's true, public officials elsewhere have been known to be corrupt, but even truer, they at least bother to hide it and resign when they are exposed. Local crooks do not have to suffer this inconvenience. Here, you call someone corrupt, he has a good laugh and call you inggit, or envious. Or, like Gonzalez, call you holier than him, which my neighborhood mechanic definitely is. As the congressmen have shown-they are livid because they did not get to reinsert their prime pork cuts in a bicameral budget hearing-government has declared open season on pillage.

The only one who seems to have been vigorously incensed by the PERC findings is Jinggoy Estrada, for reasons that are as pure as driven cattle. If, as PERC shows, the Arroyo government has been no cleaner than Erap's, he asks, how come Erap is in jail and GMA is in Baguio? A good question-though that again is not an argument for freeing Erap, only for jailing GMA as well. PERC did suggest GMA has stolen less than Marcos but just as much as Erap, a function not of restraint, but simply a function of having less to steal. Indeed, that a government can steal at this scale while the country grovels in near-bankruptcy is a feat worthy of Ripley's. The image of trawlers siphoning an over-fished sea to get what's been left behind leaps to mind.

But lest we truly feel holier than thou and think GMA alone is guilty of turning this country into the second most corrupt in Asia, let's think again. Of course, she has done so, but she has done so not just through the tolerance of the most influential sectors of society but through their active collaboration. Everyone knew GMA was cheating and stealing during those elections. Everyone knew the Comelec wasn't just partisan but was engineering the elections to favor GMA. Everyone knew GMA was using taxpayers' money wholesale and the Pagcor and PCSO to campaign relentlessly-and expensively-advertising her virtues on TV well up to Election Day.

You even had political pundits predicting in smug, worldly, in-the-know tones that she would win precisely because of those things. No one thought to say that if that was so, then the point was to protest it violently. What is business complaining about today? It was the first to agree to this patent corruption because a GMA presidency, rather an FPJ one, would presumably be good for business. What is the Church complaining about? Jaime Cardinal Sin was openly plugging for GMA, in the same way Ronald Reagan was plugging for Marcos on the time-hallowed principle that "I don't mind that he's an SOB so long as he's our SOB." And what is civil society complaining about? St. Paul was stricken into enlightenment by a thunderbolt from heaven, Code-NGO was stricken blind by P1.4 billion in Peace Bonds.

What is all this saying but that our moral guardians protest corruption only when it does not benefit them? We're the second most corrupt country in Asia?

Well, I did get another text message that said Jose Pidal is contesting the idea, saying we will be second to none.