Big

Coming home after burying the most honest man in the world, I read about the businessmen signing an “Integrity Pledge” to help government fight corruption. P-Noy lauded it, saying it wasn’t enough that government tried to instill a culture of honesty in its ranks, the private sector needed to do the same. He was glad business was doing so.

Tony Kwok, head of the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption, put it more succinctly when he told the businessmen: “Don’t ask why government is failing to fight corruption. Ask yourselves. It takes two to tango.” It’s good advice particularly for business in this country. This is one country where politics and business are hand-in-glove, where it’s next-to-impossible to do business without doing politics. It’s the most hilarious, if not hypocritical, thing when business complains about government being corrupt. It won’t be so without them. They’re part of the problem.

P-Noy has every reason to be glad to hear that they want to be part of the solution. But coming home from burying the most honest man in the world, I was struck by one thing. Trying to instill a culture of honesty in government and even business is not enough. In fact, it’s not just that it’s not enough, it’s that it cannot happen without something else. That is instilling a culture of honesty among the public.

That is the key. That is the pivot. That is the linchpin.

The sheer contrast between the way an honest man and a crook die in this country is staggering.

When Leon Pilar Jr. was laid to rest last Thursday, a sprinkling of people gathered to pay their last respects. His family was there, his friends were there, some strangers whose lives he had touched in some way were there. The country did not mourn his passing, the city did not note his loss. The city of course was in the throes of festivity, it was the Peñafrancia fiesta last week, and few places in this country celebrate their feast with a depth of piety and revelry that Bicol does. Certainly, as well, Mr. Pilar himself would have been aghast at the thought of the world stopping, or of his fellow Nagueños suspending laughter, because of him.

His passing did get a bit of notice from the local media after I wrote about him last week. But for the most part, he went by as quietly in death as he did in life. He was not a big man, it was all his family could do to deal with the financial travails of his passing. He was not a big man, he had never drawn attention to himself, even if that was so only by personal preference. Even if that was so because he always thought people who did so were just insecure about themselves they needed extrinsic accolade to boost their sense of self-worth.

What happens when a public official or a tycoon or a general or an archbishop dies? Half the time we know the fellow was an a–hole in life and remained so in death. Half the time we know that the fellow was far more crooked than Gloria’s spine. But government, business, the military and the Church trumpet off his virtues, which no one may controvert by fiat of a culture that commands respect for the dead. Government, business, the military and the Church fill the air with lamentations over his loss, which no one may dampen by virtue of a religion that transfigures the dead in more ways than Christianity thought possible.

Now and then, they even try to turn him into a hero. Now and then, they even want him buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Of course we may expect kin and friends to do that, quite apart from the strangers who managed to profit from his sojourn on earth and who will continue to do so by being in the good graces of those he left behind. But we are party to it too. We deem it to be the natural order of things. We ourselves would have liked nothing better than to have gotten them to be sponsors of our children’s weddings and baptisms when they lived. So when they die, we might harbor cynical thoughts about their lives in our minds, or send text jokes about their deaths through our cell phones, but we are not surprised, or appalled, that they should get all the attention they do. Or get the eulogies, conscripted or freely given, that they do.

They were big in life. They are big in death.

So long as we believe this, so long will corruption riot in this country. Instilling a culture of honesty in government and business rests on instilling a culture of honesty among the people, and instilling a culture of honesty among the people begins with changing valuations like this. It begins by singing that children’s song about big and small, and knowing exactly what big is and what small is.

Crookedness is not big, it is the smallest thing in the world. Crooks, however they wear the barong Tagalog of the public official, the three-piece suit of the big businessman, the medals of the general, and the robes of the bishop, are not larger than life, they are lesser than life. They are not worth the obituaries that are issued in their name, they are not worth the paper their eulogies are printed on. Some people’s deaths are as heavy as a mountain, others are as light as a feather, we activists used to say. The deaths of crooks are as light as a feather.

It is the deaths of honest men that deserve our hugest notice. It is the deaths of people who touched our lives by their quiet grace that deserve our deepest feelings of loss. It is the deaths of people who gave us to see what real power is, which is the power to unfold life’s possibilities, and what real wealth is, which is the wealth of laughter and caring, that deserve our most copious tears. We don’t get to do that and this country will never rid itself of corruption. We don’t get to do that, and this country will never be:

Big.