Family ties

Last Friday a newspaper reported on its front page that the wives of senior government officials received part of about $36 million that their husbands are accused of pocketing from an online project.

The wives, according to an investigator, spent the money “as if it fell from the sky, without limits.” During an overseas trip organized by the agency where the husbands worked, the investigator said, some of the wives spent the equivalent of up to about $1,309.41 on souvenirs.

This scandal is in Indonesia, the wives’ husbands work in the Indonesian justice and human rights ministry, and the newspaper is The Jakarta Post. The overseas trip was arranged by the ministry’s directorate general of public law administration.

But you would have surely guessed quickly that this could not have been in the Philippines, because while $1,309.41 would have bought a lot of refrigerator magnets, t-shirts and caps, our government officials don’t go for penny-ante souvenirs.

That $1,309.41 is no match for 105,000 euros. The amount could have bought only about a dozen legs of jamon Serrano during a Spanish junket, and only one Burberry trench coat or a Louis Vuitton bag at Harrod’s in London.

The amount is not enough to buy even the strap of a 45,000-euro Roger Dubuis Bi-Retro limited edition wristwatch.

But it’s fascinating to see how the Philippines and Indonesia, where most of our ancestors came from, are on the same trajectory in terms of economic development and political problems.

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Is corruption harder to eradicate in certain cultures? Indonesians tell me that traditionally, their masses go for strong paternal political figures who can take care of everyone in the community. If the paternal figure keeps for himself public funds, the poor who don’t pay taxes and have no financial stake in governance don’t mind as long as they are beneficiaries of patronage.

This was a source of power for the dictator Suharto, a Javanese puppet master, and it is no surprise that corruption became a hallmark of his long reign.

Indonesians also have extended families. As we have learned from national experience, this can be both a strength and weakness. Strong family bonds mean fewer people with psychological problems that arise from loneliness and the thought that you have no one to rely on except yourself. These strong family bonds, apart from the spiritual conviction that we are never alone because a higher being is always by our side, probably account for survey results showing that Filipinos are among the happiest people on the planet, regardless of poverty and other hardships. We take comfort in the thought that there is a fallback position, that there is someone to rely on during bad times.

But the extended family system, and the tradition of looking after one’s relatives, has also created a tradition of putting the clan ahead of the nation. There is no sense of a greater public good. Real equal opportunity is an alien concept here. We have too many public officials in all branches of government who owe their positions and their perks not to capability but to family connections.

It is a culture where ending political dynasties, as envisioned in our Constitution, will never go beyond a best-efforts pledge.

It is also a culture where public funds are regarded as private money, to be spent by public officials, their spouses and children.

This you will suspect from the details that are trickling out of the investigation of the police generals and their spouses who were caught bringing out of the Moscow airport 105,000 euros in hard cash.

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Newly retired Philippine National Police comptroller Eliseo de la Paz told the Senate last Saturday that when he and his wife Maria Fe, along with Cynthia Verzosa, wife of PNP chief Jesus Verzosa, and Chief Superintendent Jaime Caringal were apprehended with the 105,000 in Moscow, they were not on their way back to Manila but were in fact headed for a European tour that would have taken them to Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Vienna.

Their detention by Russian authorities aborted the trip, along with his plan to buy a 45,000-euro chronometer in Vienna as requested by a family friend, De la Paz testified.

The family friend, Tyrone Ng Arejola, testified that one of his companies does business with the PNP, the Department of Transportation and Communications and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. In 2006, Arejola testified, his company was awarded a P90-million supply contract by the PNP.

Arejola insists all his contracts were won through public bidding. De la Paz and the other PNP officials also insist that their wives paid their way to Moscow and would have spent private funds for the European tour, wherein the 105,000 euros would have been used for the acquisition of intelligence equipment.

I don’t know what sort of intelligence equipment can be purchased in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria. I also don’t think you can use P6.9 million worth of public funds to buy intelligence equipment over the counter without violating government procurement rules, especially if the handler of the cash is a retired public servant.

Even the nature of the cash is unclear. It was originally described as part of the PNP contingency fund. Now it is described as intelligence money.

De la Paz has sworn that he has done nothing wrong. All he and the other generals had planned was some quality time for themselves and their wives.

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FEEDBACK: Reacting to a previous column, businessman Tony Leviste wrote to say that he was “unjustly and undeservedly” detained for 105 days at the Makati City Jail and was not feigning illness when he was allowed to get medical treatment for “internal hemorrhage” at the Makati Medical Center. “I was at the verge of death when I was hospitalized,” he wrote. Leviste, on trial for killing his aide, said that unlike Jocjoc Bolante, he did not flee or escape, and that he surrendered to the police. “I am not a criminal,” he wrote. “In due time, I shall be vindicated.”