Scams here and there

There's a report that 98 congressmen and senators are involved in an alleged P10 billion scam. If this is true, and many believe it is, what a huge loss of financial resource! With that money, how many school buildings would have been built? How many malnourished kids fed? How many hospitals stacked with urgently needed medicine? Yet the total loss could be much, much higher because what has been revealed were funds released only in the last one or two fiscal years. For how many years has this shenanigan been going on? No wonder most senators and representatives are multi-millionaires. No wonder some public agencies are under-performing because fake NGOs are sucking them dry. No wonder the poor are proliferating.

Outrageous, hideous, immoral - qualifiers like these fall short in describing this mother of all scams in this country.

And yet, how composed are our elite in the halls of Batasan and Senate these days. How awkwardly non-committal is the Advocate of  “matuwid na daan” in his Pasig Office. Worse, how quite are the people in the streets.

In Egypt, Peru, Brazil, Italy, Myanmar and other countries, mass actions are going on in protest of corruption and bureaucratic malfunctions. Are our causes here less explosive than those of foreign protestors?

This exorbitant loss of resources plus other foul-smelling anomalies in BOC, DA, DPWH, PNP and others - is this not enough to rouse the ire of the average Filipino? No less than President Aquino publicly chided the Bureau of Customs and two other agencies for anomalies and lackluster performance. And the people knew he had enough reasons for doing so. We in Cebu are of course very much aware of the irregularities going on in the BOC, for one, because we still remember the disappearance of one shipload of smuggled rice a year ago, and recently the mysterious loss of more than 200 sacks of smuggled rice while under BOC custody. 

Patience is a value shared nationwide. Pliant like the bamboo, one writer says, of the Filipino temperament. It stands upright on normal weather but when rough wind comes it simply bends down to avoid getting broken. Then when the ill wind is gone, why, it raises itself stalwart and proud again.

It's a good value, no doubt, if observed in moderation. But what happens if the ill wind never stops? Then one keeps on bending and bending, until standing again becomes difficult. Slavish mentality comes to mind here.

Slavish mentality - has this become the cancer in the Filipino psyche today? Most likely, because why have we tolerated massive corruption in the government? Why have we doggedly idolized politicians and pseudo leaders?

There's a talk of scrapping the pork barrel. But how can this be done when even the President himself wants a status quo? Even if 10 angels would shout into the ears of our leaders, nothing will happen. The pork barrel is the life-blood of every power-that-be in the legislature. Without it can they stay where they are? Malacañang too is obsessed with its own version or pork barrel. Without this how can it make lawmakers tow the line? Indeed, abolishing the pork barrel is an impossible dream.

And so this scenario: Syndicated corruption will hold sway for years and many more years despite new faces in Congress and in Malacañang. From time to time somebody will come and proclaim himself a messiah of good governance, but nothing will happen because politics always has a way of corroding good intentions.

The people of course will continue to have their calvary of hard times, making do with a modicum of sustenance and poor schooling, and suffering the ordeal of broken families as their loved ones eke a living abroad.

Where's the light at the end of the tunnel? How long will the people have to suffer? Only the events will teach us in each hour, says a poet. What's that event would likely be for us?

The history of oppression in any country points to this inevitable consequence: civil disturbance.