Rome was not built in a day

Speaker JDV means well to seek a joint statement with President GMA for a moral revolution. In his letter he said a new beginning for our nation was possible if she had the will and mind to use the vast powers of the Presidency to lead a moral revolution in our public life. But making a statement is one thing and getting it done is another.

There is a proverb which aptly captures the dilemma posed by the Speaker’s challenge to President GMA —“Rome was not built in a day.” It took centuries, generations to build the magnificent city that Rome eventually became. That is also true of the making of a nation any place, any time, the Philippines included. Nor does it help to cite Singapore or Malaysia which have achieved their own successes. Like individuals, each country is unique with its own strong and weak points to face the challenges of its destiny. It takes time to get things right but we should be consoled that we also learn even from our mistakes. Bottom line is anything worthwhile takes time, trouble and infinite patience to achieve. So is our vision for the country. It is not solely about wealth although that is necessary. On the scale of building something like Rome, we have not done too badly. We are making our own Rome.

I am not sure that creating ‘a high-level Council on Moral Reform and National Renewal,’ will do the trick either. Immediately we are faced with the problem of who would decide who should be appointed to this body. What criteria will be used for the appointments — individual talent or team players? That puts us back into square one and that is only one of several suggestions outlined in the letter. To put it bluntly, we are coping with original sin. 24/7.

This is not to say that we should not try or that we could just go on merrily with what we have now. Speaker JDV warns of ‘reaching a crisis point’ with people giving up on government because of some wayward officials. I agree we should try harder to change our ways. But it is dangerous to suggest that quick fixes lead to solutions. Perhaps the metaphor of how to build a house is more apt. We must start with a foundation and slowly build up the posts, the walls, the windows, a sewage system before we get to the kitchen, bathrooms and bedrooms. We have to restructure our society and the politics it has engendered so reforms envisioned have a fairer chance to succeed.

Under our present system we have put too high a premium for money and power and then wonder why elected officials become corrupt. This is not to say there would be no corruption even in the most benign political structure. I will raise the temperature higher and say that a corruption-free government does not necessarily deliver good governance. Perhaps it is good to look around other countries and see how they are organized to make corruption irrelevant. And that is true even in the most sophisticated societies.

Just last Friday the big news in the UK was how a labor peer (House of Lords) was paid to introduce a lobbyist to a minister. The lobbyist paid cash for an introduction to Lord Drayson, the defense minister in charge of billions of pounds of military procurement, according to evidence obtained by the Guardian.

Paying cash for ministerial introductions is a practice although frowned on at the House of Lords, is not specifically outlawed. “Cash for introductions” is forbidden by the main lobbyists’ trade body, the Association of Professional Political Consultants, but Mr Wood, the lobbyist in question is not a member. Under the code, a peer must specifically declare his financial interests to a minister if they have a meeting, so that the minister can form a rounded judgment of their arguments.”

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I attended the First National Conference on Climate Change Adaptation  in Bicol on the invitation of the economist, Governor Joey Salceda. President GMA took time out to come to the opening ceremonies to show her concern for environment even in the midst of political problems, a hectic schedule in Manila and having had to drop by Catanduanes as well. It is difficult not to admire how hardworking the President is. She was there to lend support to the two-day conference and the raging environment issue as a priority of her government. Salceda has made the clarion call with the signing of the historic Albay Declaration on Climate Change.

Asked to give a response from media, I told the audience of local officials, NGOs, religious and department officials that the high sounding statements of the declaration and the conference would be in vain if it did not go beyond the hall. They will need media help. I cited the example of UK’s Independent which has taken up the cause for responding to climate change or global warming urgently. We could do the same here in the Philippines with STAR in the lead. 

I was at former US Vice-President Al Gore’s lecture on “The Inconvenient Truth” when he came to Manila last year on the invitation of Amb. Al Yuchengco. From small audiences of a few hundreds in the US, he patiently persisted with his advocacy. Today he is Mr. Environment and the world is his audience. Few Filipinos know that environmental scientist Rodel Lasco, chief of the World Agroforestry of the UP Center in Los Banos and authority on Southeast Asian weather patterns as well as UN representative to Third World countries was a co-recipient of Mr. Gore for the Nobel Prize.

A recent headline story of The Independent was the “landmark assessment by the UN on the state of the world’s environment”. “It paints the bleakest picture yet of our planet’s well-being. The warning is stark: humanity’s future is at risk unless urgent action is taken. Over the past 20 years, almost every index of the planet’s health has worsened. At the same time, personal wealth in the richest countries has grown by a third. The report, by the United Nations Environment Program (Unep), warns that the vital natural resources which support life on Earth have suffered significantly since the first such report in 1987. However, this gradual depletion of the world’s natural “capital” has coincided with unprecedented economic gains for developed nations, which, for many people, have masked the growing crisis.

Nearly 400 experts from around the world contributed to the report, which warns that humanity itself could be at risk if nothing is done to address the three major environmental problems of a growing human population, climate change and the mass extinction of animals and plants.”