Traitors

What mystifies me, really, is how many traitors can exist at the highest levels of government and no one seems to be affected by it – not even the President.

What shameless greed. How can public officials be proud of their work and be great representative personalities when the fruits of their labor are all rotten? Here we are at the mercy of Ping Lacson and Miriam Santiago who are actually confusing us all the more – directing us here and there to possible anomalies, fraud and corruption in government.

Everyone who works in government surely knows the ropes on how to get away with ‘things’ specially those who have been there for over decades. Even the so-called ‘political dynasties’ – are really there to protect their interest more than to serve. Congress and Senate better work on a bill to limit ‘political dynasties’ from dominating the country – it does not work – the families just get richer and actually think they own their town or province acting like the feudal lords during the medieval ages. Just look around you – most of our city mayors and governors have their inscriptions in every lamp post with their chosen colors calling out really loud. Don’t they just love themselves too much? Shameless!

Yes! We can hear you and we can see you. Why not just improve your sidewalks, streets, parks, marketplaces, municipal halls, barangay hall (that do not seem to be functional) and garbage system? Too many billboards with your faces suffocate the citizenry. Do not worry we know a good mayor when we see one. You do not have to advertise yourselves.

I pity those in government who work hard and in the end are used as sacrificial lambs by these meisters. The only possible reason we must exert every effort to unmask the culprits and resolutely plug the “leak” is because the rest of the world is now totally convinced of what it has long suspected, that our Cabinet, Congress, Senate — in other words, Government is a joke.

We cannot even convict anyone of corruption because there seems to be a reason for everything and a way out. Even a murderer can get away with crime – all he needs is ‘money, money, money’ and he will be a free man. Does that say something about the Judiciary? With the over “supply” of lawyers in this country – I pray that a new breed evolves so that we can clean up the system. We need to clean up the system or else our country will belong to the wolves. Anyone care to stand up and fight for good government? Anyone?

When our Cabinet officials are not telling the President how wonderful she looks, how “cute” is her hair-styling, and how stupid her critics are, they are busy praising themselves, lauding the terrific performance of their own departments, and telling the Chief Executive how well the things are going in this country. The Republic is going somewhere, all right – it is going down. What I fear is that those feckless officers on deck, who continue to pronounce our Ship of State is shipshape, when its hull has been breeched, the sea is rushing in, and we are all in danger of drowning, may, in the end, not find the courage and honesty in themselves to go down with the ship.

I can only say that our fault lies not in being dumb, but in being too smart for ourselves. Pride got before a fall. We are over-proud. We need to look into ourselves and take our job in public service more seriously. We need to study our actions not just do an abracadabra or hocus-pocus. We need to look at the long term effect of our actions. We need to take heed of what history has already taught us through the experiences of other great nations.

Judging from our current controversies and debates, we have become a nation obsessed with selfish trifles. Such mediocre thoughts make us a society of toads and bullfrogs whose croak is more formidable than its achievement. It’s clear that what we lack in this uncertain era is leadership – and vision. There are mountains to be conquered, opportunities to be seized, empires to be made. Our elders recall with nostalgia that in the so-called Golden Yesterday, giants walked this land. There were “greats” like Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio, Emilio Aguinaldo (Ka Andres’ own bitter foe), Antonio Luna, Gregorio del Pilar, M. H. del Pilar, Manuel L. Quezon, Sergio Osmeña Sr., Manuel A Roxas, Tomas Confesor, Camilo Osias, Claro M. Recto, Ramon Magsaysay, to mention just a handful. We seem to have diminished, in comparison, into a land of the dwarfs.

And yet, as my father put it, “what made men like our latterday hero, Ninoy Aquino, in concert with our founding fathers, great? All our greats, men and women, were uncommon, individuals. Today, we reward only conformity, institutionalize mediocrity, and glorify poverty as a virtue instead of a failing, which must be corrected. We have, alas, taken as our approach to everything that old Japanese saying: The nail that sticks out must be hammered down. We seem to be deliberately willing ourselves to be small-minded and mean – and insular. Only by recovering that breadth of vision, that optimism of purpose, that spirit of daring and sacrifice that belonged to yesterday can we aspire to be a strong and happy nation tomorrow. Can it be done? Of course, it can.”

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In this country, we have a strong case of the powerful trampling the weak, the rich versus the poor. We have people being tortured, slaughtered on our streets, civilians being “kidnapped” and “salvaged,” or snatched and never heard from again but what does our watchmen fight about – nothing but themselves. We have arrogant public officials everywhere, rich or poor, mayors or city officials including the cops on the block. We are, sadly, too full of ourselves, and bickering as we constantly do, among ourselves, we never get anything done, or anything accomplished. We are a nation in love with big words and our own petty self-importance, while the big injustices go unnoticed and grave wrongs are never set right.

Years ago my father’s friend, a prominent foreign businessman, the head of a large multinational group put it painfully well. He told him, bluntly: “I love Filipinos. You people are great. But you’ll never be a NIC (Newly Industrialized Country) because you prefer to be a NATO.” Since the only NATO my dad knew was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (that military alliance of the US and Western Europe), he was puzzled at this remark and asked him to explain what he meant. It turned out that “NATO” was, to him, an acronym for “No Action, Talk Only.”

And that’s what we have in our country, indeed. No action, only talk, talk, talk.