Character
The dip isn’t huge, but is likely to bring the camp of Gloria Arroyo and Renato Corona into chanting more loudly their mantra that P-Noy’s obsession with fighting corruption has led to the neglect of more important things.
Already, a number of people have attributed P-Noy’s dip in approval rating in the SWS survey to rising oil prices, which will inevitably lead to a rise in fares and basic commodities, primarily food. Which will also inevitably lead the usual suspects into saying P-Noy should think less about impeaching Corona (and prosecuting Arroyo) and more to feeding Juan (and they don’t mean Ponce Enrile).
Having just come home from abroad (the UK, where I watched Tony Meloto and Luis Oquineña receive a Skoll Award for Gawad Kalinga, the highest global award for social entrepreneurship; but that’s for another day), I have a different perspective on it. I have come home in fact with a deeper appreciation for the government’s effort to fight corruption, an effort whose earnestness is shown by nothing less than the prosecution of a chief justice and ex-president, however tenuous, or dubious, the claims of both have been on their positions.
Arguably, you do need to attend to pressing economic needs. You may not be able to control the rise of oil prices but you can control its impact on the country. You can always make the rich, rather than the poor, take the brunt of it by way of subsidies. Oil and rice are the two most volatile things in countries like ours, raising political tsunamis in their wake. It was Suharto’s decision to lift the subsidies on both that led to the riots that eventually led to his downfall. The likelihood that rising oil (and rice) prices will lead to P-Noy’s overthrow is of course remote, but the likelihood that it will impact further on his approval ratings is not.
But having seen this country grow from bad to worse over the 25 years that I have been commenting on it, I’ve become exceptionally wary of prescriptions that the government think less of improving the culture and more of improving the economy. In fact, I’ve gotten more convinced that you don’t do the first, you won’t do the second. That point is particularly driven home by the dramatic choice this country’s two tyrants, Arroyo and Ferdinand Marcos, gave us, which was bread or freedom, both of course rooting for bread. That choice turned out to be bogus, neither of them giving bread in exchange for freedom. Indeed both of them grabbing the bread along with the freedom. Both made corruption the overriding force of governance, and indeed of life. Or more specifically, an extreme form of corruption, which is the culture of impunity.
That’s how I’ve always thought of corruption during Marcos’ and Arroyo’s time, a culture of impunity. It’s not just the theft of money, it’s the theft of life itself, figuratively and literally. It’s a culture that has made governance a joke, and a most cruel one, allowing government not just to be totally irresponsible but to commit the most horrendous crimes against the people, the criminals knowing they would never be caught or punished.
Well, as this government has shown, they would never be caught or punished—only in their time. That is no small contribution to the future of this country. It is coming to a crossroads and choosing which path to take.
A government can never really do everything for its people. Certainly not in a country like ours, which is mired not just in mind-boggling poverty but in mind-boggling inequality. But it can do a great deal to inspire them and bring them to do things for themselves. Fighting not just corruption but corruption of an order of a culture of impunity is inspiring them. Showing the governed that their government is not just trying to be responsible to them but has a malasakit for them is inspiring them. It is giving a country character.
That is the one thing the countries that have done well in life have—character. That was driven to me exceptionally forcefully recently by the pictures that appeared of Fukushima a year after the murderous tsunami that hit it. The contrast between the aftermath of the disaster and today, one year later, is awe-inspiring. It’s almost as if nothing ever came to ravage the place. The buildings are back in place, the roads are back in place, the lives of the people are back in place. Little wonder the country didn’t just come back from the devastation of World War II, a couple of atomic bombs dropped into it to boot, it rose to become one of the greatest nations on earth.
That came about of course because of the willingness of people to make sacrifices, often suicidal, as when the workers of the nuclear plants braved intolerable levels of radiation to make sure the contamination did not spread into the city. Those are extreme levels of caring for others, which is the opposite of the culture of impunity, an equally extreme level of me-first-ness.
During Arroyo’s time, each time I came home from abroad I’d be terribly depressed by the contrast between what I saw elsewhere, including the conditions among our neighbors, and what I saw here. Which began and ended with the airport, particularly Naia. The physical signs of decrepitude are still there, particularly in Naia, but this time around you get to be a little more bullish that the wheels are turning, that congressmen may soon not be so free to go abroad and spend the people’s money in places untouched by Lent, that chief justices and presidents may soon not be free to imagine they own the law, they own the country, they own the people they are not there to serve, they are there to oppress. Who knows? Maybe that’s us starting to grow a heart.
Maybe that’s us starting to develop character.
