“The nail that sticks out gets hammered,” an old Filipino axiom warns. And so it came to pass that thieves finally pounded Antonio Calipjo-Go flat.
For 12 years, this academic supervisor single-handedly exposed error-studded textbooks. Bought with taxpayers’ money, the flawed books miseducated generations of students, as the current Inquirer series notes.
Now, this “nemesis of error-filled textbooks” has called it quits. “The uphill battle … led to nowhere,” the 56-year-old whistleblower of flawed textbooks wearily admitted to this paper. [Read story]
Go sowed the wind by documenting multiple errors in books from science, grammar, social studies to history. He reaped the whirlwind.
“Big publishers, corrupt officials and some newspaper columnists mounted a well-orchestrated campaign … and questioned my integrity,” he said. The Philippine Press Council’s letter asking that Go’s rejoinders be published went unheeded.
His capitulation leaves hanging the task of ensuring up-to-standard textbooks. It also throws up a sordid fact: government often beatifies crooks but leaves whistle-blowers twisting in the wind.
The litmus test remains unchanged: “Does government protect or jettison whistle-blowers?” Many risk jobs, ostracism and sometimes lives to uproot crime.
“Governments must create an environment that encourages, instead of penalizes, citizens who denounce venality.” The Philippines and other 134 countries took that stand at the 9th International Anti-Corruption Conference in Durham, South Africa. That was over a decade ago.
Today, “the kind and extent of support that a legitimate whistleblower should be able to expect [remains] unclear,” notes an Asian Institute of Management (AIM) study, “Whistle Blowing in the Philippines: Awareness, Attitudes and Structures.” “Whistleblowers lack institutional shields against retaliation.”
The good that denouncers do is patent. Banker Clarissa Ocampo unflinchingly revealed that Joseph Estrada masked himself in the notorious “Jose Velarde” account, Viewpoint noted in August 2004. Antonio Calipjo-Go repeatedly exposed flawed textbooks. In Estrada’s impeachment trial, “secretary Emma Lim exposed ‘Jingle Bells’ massive ‘jueteng’ [underground lottery] payoffs and the shell Muslim Foundation.”
Flash forward. In the current P728-million fertilizer scam probe, Sen. Mar Roxas showed former Agriculture Undersecretary “Joc-joc” Bolante a whistle-blower’s picture.
“I don’t know her, sir,” Bolante muttered.
“That’s Marlene Esperat,” Roxas explained. This journalist had been shot in front of her children in 2003.
Roxas then showed Bolante photos of Esperat’s bloodied body and told him, “She filed a P423-million case against you for overpriced fertilizers. Remember?”
The senator denounced Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez for scrapping graft charges filed by Esperat against Bolante, Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap and other agriculture department officials. The public perception is that Gutierrez is a Malacañang toady, Roxas claimed.
Maybe. But it is crystal clear that those who horsewhip moneychangers out of the temple here often end up excoriated.
Ensign Philip Pestaño denounced, in 1997, misuse of Navy boats to haul illegal lumber and drugs. His bullet-riddled body was found in his cabin. “Suicide,” the Navy ruled within 24 hours. “Murder,” a Senate investigation found. In 12 years, the Military Ombudsman hasn’t budged beyond securing counter-affidavits.
Land Bank of the Philippines’s Acsa Ramirez blew the whistle on a tax scam. Inept National Bureau of Investigation agents shoved her instead into a police lineup to serve as photo op for President Macapagal-Arroyo. The government backtracked later. That screw-up, of course, spooked potential whistleblowers. Worse, the President didn’t apologize.
The Supreme Court thrashed the Commission on Elections for paying P1.3 billion for 1,991 flawed computers to Mega-Pacific Consortium, an 11-day-old firm. Pay back, the Court ordered.
Not a centavo has been repaid, as the Ombudsman waffled. Mega-Pacific, meanwhile, sued computer expert Augusto Lagman for libel since he cited the Supreme Court decision in a radio interview.
Shanghaied by government agents, Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada finally testified before the Senate on how a ZTE Corp. national broadband network contract for $132 million ballooned to $329 million. “Bukol” [bribes] padded the cost. Lozada has been fired, sued and harassed. But the authors of the scam remain scot-free.
“The ultimate perversion is to call evil good.” Whistleblowers who tell the truth “make corruption a high-risk activity,” Romulo Miral wrote in the AIM study. “But the absence of a legal framework makes personal costs of whistle blowing very high. [It] is sometimes a matter of life and death… Major impediments include weak protection and support.”
The 50 AIM survey respondents agree that whistleblowers today, like Antonio Calipjo-Go, are in “short supply.” A major reason is the personal costs that whistleblowers absorb. Thieves are not ostracized in this country. Their cash buys them the first places at table.
There’s no shortage of ideas for a policy on whistleblowers. But those in a position to adopt reforms are often the very persons whistles are blown at. Their inaction is buttressed by a culture of impunity. People bolt from those who rock the boat with harsh truths. Jerusalem also stoned its prophets.
The ultimate damage of school children shortchanged by flawed textbooks will persist into the future—unless new Antonio Calipjo-Gos step forward soon to be hammered flat.
* * *
Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com
