Drastic reforms needed to provide every Filipino a share of the national wealth

I write to share with readers, who are wishing away graft and corruption in our time, this post from a social media group, and my own views about the subject.

This was written 63 years ago — in 1957  —by Ayn Rand, a Russian-American writer and philosopher. In this rather amazing piece, she was describing a society that somehow resembles our particular circumstances today.

“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors —when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you— when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed.”

Shouldn’t we listen to her?

The problem of corruption in our country, I believe, has reached the highest levels in the past six decades or so, under the regime of a man who, in order to get elected as president, promised to end corruption in the FIRST SIX MONTHS of his term; who, some weeks ago, said he had given up on graft in government after failing miserably in curbing corruption in the four years he had been in power; and who, more recently, PROMISED AGAIN he will end corruption — in the last two years of his term!

Should we listen to him?

I say the problem of corruption around us here is a pestering symptom, a continuing manifestation, of the adverse impact of our oppressive and decaying social, economic, and political order. The regime changes we have had since World War II — including that which brought upon us in 2016 an indecent, incompetent, corrupt, immoral, misogynistic, murderous leader who we elected under the same corrupt electoral system we continue to embrace, have not brought any relief to our suffering nation. The 2022 elections, if held under the same rotten electoral system, do not hold promise at all of significant improvement in our life. Do they?

The corruption that has stained and crippled governance under past and present presidents is SYSTEMIC. It can not be licked by anyone we will hereafter elect as president UNLESS we first drastically reform the present political order, including the electoral system that allows unqualified candidates with questionable moral compasses and motivations to be elected, buying votes and influence with big bucks of their own, or with campaign funds “donated” by our moneyed classes who want to be assured their business and personal interests will be protected by candidates who win elections. Once in power, many of those elected would engage in graft to recover money they threw away to get elected, and build up campaign chests for the next election. And so the merry ways of the corrupt and the corrupted go on and on and on in a vicious cycle.

We need drastic, fundamental reforms not only in our political order but also, and equally important, in our social and economic order. We must put in place a comprehensive, strategic plan for social change, and have the political will to address social inequalities that alienate Filipinos from the government, to temper the greed of the rich and the powerful, and to provide every Filipino, the poor in particular, the opportunity to earn his or her rightful share of the national wealth.

I hope we, all of us, will take it as a patriotic duty to get involved in a movement for social change.

Let us not accept that our society is doomed. It is not — if we all stand up to those who corrupt as well as those who they corrupt, and go for social change now.

COl. LEONARDO O. ODOÑO (Ret.),
PMA Class of 1964
[email protected]