Corruption? Is it still here?

I agree with Senator Miriam Santiago's observation that the proposal of former senator Panfilo Lacson to create a Presidential Commission Against Corruption is laughable. For indeed it is. The president himself is supposed to be waging a war on corruption. What the heck, then, should the Lacson commission be for?

Ever since President Aquino was thrust into the political big league following the death of his mother by opportunists only wanting a horse they can ride to victory, his mantra was already anti-corruption. Lacson certainly must have remembered it very well – "kung walang kurap, walang mahirap."

If Lacson forgot that one, surely he could not have forgotten the rest of it because Aquino repeated it at every opportunity. In every speech Aquino makes and regardless of the occasion, he never fails to point out how corrupt his predecessor was and how he has to keep on cleaning up the mess he inherited.

So is Lacson now disputing Aquino? Is he suggesting that Aquino's personal fight against corruption has laid a big fat egg and that it was now time to take the fight away from his hands and into that of a commission manned by more competent graft busters?

Santiago is laughing because she is not friends with Lacson. She thinks Lacson, now out of work, wants a new job with government and is dictating the president what job he should be given. Nevertheless, the Lacson proposition is still funny in another respect.

Lacson walks into the room with an unflattering resume trailing behind him. One need not repeat what it is here. That is how common the knowledge has become. Even granting he is not personally corrupt, still Lacson is not exactly the kind of guy you would trust with authority, especially the legal kind.

There are just too many controversies hounding the man that to give him legal authority over something as controversial as corruption, the first casualty of the enterprise will undoubtedly be credibility. And that is the Achilles heel of any fight against corruption.

To be sure, corruption is very much around. In fact, the temptation is great to conclude that it stares everyone in the eye more compellingly now than it used to do during the time of the discredited administration. And that is because the pretense at incorruptibility is far more persistent and intense.

This is the same way with priests who sin. Priests spend a great deal of their lives how to be good and steeling themselves against sin. Thus when they sin, the impact is much more pronounced and unforgettable. The sins of ordinary men not steeped in the finer requirements of goodness and holiness causes much less stir.

 Lacson, to be sure, has the capability to pursue something in earnest. He is said to be a no-nonsense fellow and I believe that without question. But there are things I am uncomfortable with when entrusted in his hands.

Besides, corruption in this country is not about to go away in any of all our lifetimes. It has become so ingrained in the Filipino culture that it will probably take several generations of truly honest endeavor and wholehearted cooperation by everyone for corruption to even be minimized.

Right this very moment, halfway through the six-year term of Aquino, corruption is just as strong and as widespread as ever. It is even far worse than that of the previous administration. Nobody is just openly criticizing Aquino because people do not want to admit they have been fooled by the rhetoric in 2010.

But that is the unassailable fact. Do not take it from me. Just watch TV or read the newspaper. Tales of corruption are the daily fare in the news – some in an explosive kind of way, others too small by comparison they get mistaken for something else.

But better believe that it has not gone away. Nobody is just raising as much hell about it because people, especially the poor who are most affected by it, have been silenced by the billions in bribe money the government pours out yearly for the purpose.

 In fact, the cash doleouts to court favors of acquiescence from the poor could be the single most massive act of official corruption seen anywhere. Not only are billions of taxes wasted in this way, nobody is sure if the money even gets to where it is supposed to be headed. What commission is Lacson thinking about?