‘Anti-kapal’

Miriam Santiago is filing an anti-epal bill. “Epal” is Pinoy slang meaning people who are constantly in dire need of attention. Specifically, she is filing a bill penalizing public officials who attach their names to roads or bridges being built. The bill would mete out six months’ to a year’s imprisonment to any public official caught advertising his picture or name alongside public works projects.

“It is a prevalent practice among public officers, whether elected or appointed, to append their names to public works projects which were either funded or facilitated through their office. This is unnecessary and highly unethical and promotes a culture of political patronage and corruption.”

About time someone filed a bill like this in Congress, however the one who has done so shouldn’t really be drawing too much attention to people who like to draw too much attention to themselves. It’s an invitation to slaughter. But no matter, I’m with Santiago on this one. I’ve been pitching this myself for a long time now. Next to traffic, the signs that say, “This road (or bridge) is being built courtesy of Mayor So-and-So” never fail to stoke me to a rage.

I’ve written about this before, specifically about those huge streamers early last year that read, “Salamat po, Pangulong Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo para sa footbridge na ito” along the major thoroughfares. With the First Couple raiding the treasury like there was no tomorrow, that we should thank Arroyo for giving back an infinitesimal portion of our taxes was enough to add to your more colorful vocabulary.

Those signs, which have been a feature of the landscape for as long as I can remember, are the clearest sign we don’t have a concept of taxpayers’ money in this country. What do those signs propose but that we owe those roads and (foot) bridges not to ourselves but to our public officials who give them to us out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s the clearest sign we regard taxes not as money that belongs to us and should come back to us but as tribute or tong that we give our rulers for the privilege of being oppressed by them. If they do not give us roads and bridges, then what else is new? If they do, ah, then let us fall on our knees and give thanks to our lords, our gods.

When you’re abroad, it’s thoroughly enviable to hear the nationals of other countries talk about how their health and social welfare benefits saw them through the rough times, never mind the roads and bridges that they naturally expect to be there. Or indeed to hear our own expatriates in those countries, who have imbibed the culture, talk about expecting to have those things as a matter of course. They may complain about their taxes being raised, but they do not complain about those taxes never getting back to them. There will be hell to pay if they did not.

I’ve always held that that was the root of corruption in this country, our inability to see that taxes are our money. Of course government pays lip service to it intermittently with messages that say, “Taxes are your money.” But the public has never internalized that. The practices in any case subvert it thoroughly, practices such as signs that propose that a mayor or congressman in a sudden seizure of generosity decided one day to give you a road or a bridge. Governments can mount all sorts of campaigns against corruption, serious or not, but so long as the people do not particularly care what happens to the money that is pried loose from them, so long will corruption thrive.

A bill like Santiago’s anti-epal one does help push back this culture. But it is not only that it is a drop in the bucket, it is also that it is a drop that cannot be seen. Its problem is that its success depends on invisibility. Specifically, it depends on an effect that is not seen, which is the disappearance of the names of public officials from public works. Is the public likely to notice the vanishing? Are the signs going to be conspicuous in their absence?

In this country? No.

We need more aggressive efforts in this respect, ones whose effects are going to be very visible, if not downright conspicuous. Two things we need to drive home if we are to have any hope of stopping corruption.

One is that corruption is pagnanakaw, no more and no less than picking pockets, snatching handbags and holding up jeepneys. And the corrupt are no better than pickpockets, snatchers and holdup men. You do not invite kawatans to your homes. Certainly you do not propose to light candles with them at your child’s baptism. The point is to make the corrupt an object of opprobrium, not an object of envy.

Two is that corruption is stealing from you. What is being picked is not just another person’s pockets, it is your own. What is being snatched is not just another person’s handbag, it is your own. The ones being held up are not the other passengers in this jeep ni Erap or ni Gloria, it is you.

Anti-epal is okay, but we need something more than that. Much, much more than that.

We need a bill that’s anti-kapal.

* * *

My apologies to Bong Revilla. I did not have him in mind when I suggested that the Revillas probably had a hand in Ramona’s escape. What I had in mind were the other members of the clan directly involved in the case and their friends. When I looked at what I had written again, I was aghast to see that after quoting his spokesperson, I went on to say that however shocked they were, they could not escape suspicion for engineering the escape, thereby linking him to the deed.

Bong Revilla’s behavior throughout all this has been reasonably exemplary. His statement, “I am not a senator of my family, I am a senator of my country,” may sound like the sort of thing a politician would say, but he has at least lived up to it at cost of risking familial discord.

Again, my apologies.