Value Drivers

In a week, so much has happened to Janet Lim Napoles.  The courts have ordered her arrested for a non-bailable offense, revoked her passport, and frozen her bank accounts.  She is now a fugitive, being hunted by police forces, and the Secretary of Justice has even issued a call for ordinary bystanders to effect a citizen's arrest if they so much as see her tweezed eyebrows, opening the possibility of a potential lynch mob.

The reactions vary.  A lot have expressed relief, happiness, even vindictive joy.  A few have pooh-poohed these developments, noting that she has probably spirited out the billions it is claimed she has stolen.  (Maybe she has even hidden herself so well she will probably come out when the next President is elected.).

Some have even gone so far as saying her life is in danger, not from being thrown into an unhygienic jail cell with no access to lipstick, but from the very politicians whom she did business with, and whom she might now implicate.  After all, if the little bird sings, the vultures might get spitted and roasted.  With so much documentation surfacing and paving paper trails to their anterooms, it might be an opportune time to eliminate the threat of her very existence.

Napoles mere et fille opened Pandora's box.  The latest revelations of the Commission of Audit on even more billions mismanaged and stolen from their beneficiaries via the pork barrel allocations have merely concretized the long-held suspicions that all this was just a graft mechanism for our lawmakers.

There is now a momentum to scrap the pork barrel, with “people power” and “million march” being bandied around netizens' lips.  Will it lead to anything?  Will the electronic chatter build up enough of a groundswell to convince our legislators to give up the pork barrel system so ingrained in politics?

I had an interesting conversation the other day.  A friend was vigorously defending the pork barrel system, saying that lawmakers are paid so low, with salaries that are meaningless, that the pork barrel is the only way they can compensate themselves.  The rhetorical question thrown in my face: why would they even bother to run if they had no access to those funds?

In the midst of jetlag that wanted me to curl up and sleep instead of bursting into flames, all I could do was blearily wonder how ideals could vary so disparately from person to person.

I would have thought that “public service” as a concept did not even need to be explained.  That to serve meant to sacrifice, that to be able to render assistance and help to our fellow citizens was enough reward in itself, that there should not even be need for a conversation about compensation.

So, if a buck wanted to run for Congress to duke it out with the rest of the alligators in the body, so that they could pass meaningful laws meant to benefit the masses, why should he even need to discuss his salary?  Or the fact that it is not enough?

It's a job.  That's the salary attached to it.  You apply for the job, you get the salary.  An ordinary employee doesn't apply for a job, receive the salary, and then steal from the employer on the pretext that the salary wasn't enough to begin with.  Why should the rules be different for Congressmen?

If anything, the upcoming weeks are a test of our collective principles.  Have we reached common ground and critical mass, that we can say enough is enough with conviction, with passion, with such force that our lawmakers hear us loud and clear, that they quake in their jeweled shoes and lacquered hair while we rant, rave, and gnash our teeth?

Or will all the furor die with a whimper, and life for the vultures and crocodiles will go on, while we the ordinary citizens will just stumble along as we have always done, bearing the crushing burden of a society gone very badly awry?

The next week might tell.