Theres The Rub
Dysfunctional
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer
First Posted 02:27:00 12/17/2007
MANILA, Philippines - On Tuesday last week, our headline said, “GMA slammed for slays.” The story had to do with Edita Burgos and the kin of other victims of “salvaging” and forced disappearances laying the blame for the crimes on GMA. The day before, Monday, was International Human Rights Day, and they used the occasion to make their grievances known before the world. They cited the final report of Philip Alston, released earlier this month, which identified the military as the main perpetrator of the killings.
Next day, Wednesday, our headline read, “GMA most corrupt president, says poll.” The story had to do with a Pulse Asia survey that showed that in the eyes of most Filipinos, GMA is the most corrupt president in Philippine history. More than Corazon Aquino (deemed the least corrupt), more than Fidel Ramos, and more than even Erap. Indeed, more than Marcos himself.
What is startling about this is not the revelations themselves—though the one coming on top of the other does drive home the point about the extent of the decomposition of the corpse. And though the Pulse Asia survey does add blacker hues to a portrait of evil, particularly the part about GMA being more crooked than Marcos. That is a feat in itself, exceeding even martial law’s capacity for rapacity.
But these things are not new; despite the fresh nuances, they are well known. The abduction of Jonas Burgos is so patently the handiwork of the military it can’t fool even the blind. And from the start, Alston, the “muchacho” of the UN, as Raul Gonzalez once referred to him, had been pointing to the military as the source of the killings.
Just as well, PERC made an even worse accusation earlier this year, calling the GMA government the most corrupt in Asia. Quite incidentally, Malacañang responded to that by saying that it was done by people sympathetic to the opposition. Its current response to the Pulse Asia survey is a variation thereof: It was commissioned by the opposition, notably by Serge Osmeña. An idiotic argument, given that it has passed off surveys it has itself commissioned and that have produced findings favorable to it as gospel truth. I leave Pepe Miranda to answer the suggestion his group is susceptible to distorting reality to fit the desires of those who commission it.
But like I said, what is startling is not the revelations themselves. What is startling is the blitheness with which we are able to take these revelations. What is startling is the ease with which the GMA government is able to get away with them.
Elsewhere in the world, the public perception that a government is the most corrupt in history and that it is employing systematic murder to carry out its agenda is enough to undo it. Just one or the other is enough for leaders to be dragged to court to answer for their crimes. Here, nothing. By weekend last week, those two shrill headlines had been pretty much forgotten. The revelations might as well not have been revealed at all.
There is a point when faced by a spectacle like this that you have to see that the problem no longer lies with government but with the citizens themselves. There is a point when faced by an absurdity like this that you no longer have to blame government but the citizens themselves. That a government should reach these levels of monstrosity is breathtaking enough. That the citizens should do nothing about it—that is where the real sickness lies.
An American senator once said out of frustration at our inability to end Marcos’ rule that we were a nation of one SOB and 40 million cowards. What has changed since then is not just the fact that the 40 million has become 85 million or so. What has changed since then is that the cowards have become zombies.
Cowardice is based on fear. During Marcos’ time, the reluctance of the citizens to defy martial law, or openly express their detestation of it, came from being afraid of martial law. If I recall right, the locals retorted to being described as cowards by calling the Filipino expatriates in the United States “steak commandos”: Easy to be brave when the only thing threatening your life is cholesterol.
That the citizens have been free to express their contempt for this government in surveys and in various public forums must suggest that fear is not the factor governing their inability to end the thing they are contemptuous about. It is something else, something more debilitating, something more frightening. It is not in fact inability, it is unwillingness. It is not in fact powerlessness, it is disinterestedness.
I don’t know where it’s coming from, though one of the reactions to the Trillanes mutiny, which is that the regime has only two and half years to go, why bother cutting it short when we can get rid of it without effort, might hold some clues to it. It’s a dangerous attitude not just because one day more of unprecedented murder and pillage, not to speak of two and half years of them, is totally unacceptable in any democracy, but because it begs the question of why a regime tolerated thus will agree to go at the end of its term. Ask yourself if the most corrupt president in Philippine history—the only thing controversial there being the word “president,” the corruption including the theft of the vote and not just of money—will want to be vulnerable to the same fate, or worse, that befell her predecessor.
But whatever the reason, what all this indicts in the end is not just government, it is the nation. What all this shows is not just the mind-boggling spectacle of a government that has attained unprecedented levels of evil but a citizenry that is aware of it but is perfectly willing to abide it.
There and then you realize it’s not just this government that is dysfunctional, this whole country is.
More Inquirer columns
Previous columns:
Free, but... – 12/13/07
Death march – 12/12/07
Grave concerns – 12/11/07
Coming home – 12/10/07
Babel – 12/05/07
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