It’s the future, stupid

At La Concolacion College last Thursday, someone asked President Aquino what he thought would happen to his campaign against corruption if the impeachment court should decide to acquit Renato Corona. He replied, “It would become extremely difficult, if not impossible” to prosecute.

P-Noy went on to explain that for so long have we had to suffer a so-called justice system of “it depends.” It depends on who you are dispensing justice to. There was one kind of justice for the “makapangyarihan,” the strong and powerful, another for the “laylayan,” the poor and marginal. (His Tagalog is impressive.) There was one kind of justice for Delsa Flores, the court interpreter who lost her job and benefits after she failed to declare a stall in a wet market in her SALN, and another for Corona, who failed to declare pretty much everything he owned in his own.

It was time we stopped that culture of “it depends,” he said. He and Jojo Binay (he pointed to the Vice President who was in attendance) had only 20-30 more years to endure the oppression if it didn’t end. The students, who were barely past their teens, had 60 or more years, or their lifetime, to do so. Thankfully, he said, the power to change things lay in their hands. They were the people, it was time they got heard.

I thought it was the best part of the President’s performance last Thursday. It was a particularly good way to kick off the Edsa celebrations, reminding the world as it did of Edsa’s largeness of spirit. It drove home a couple of things to me.

One was the purity of the anticorruption cause amid the impurities of self-interest that were being flung in its path. Or the simplicity of the crusade to sweep corruption away amid the clutter of garbage, or legalistic verbiage, that had collected to keep corruption from being flushed down the sewer.

I remembered again how shortly before Corona’s impeachment P-Noy was accused of obsessing with “’pag walang corrupt, walang mahirap.” I said then that there were obsessions and there were obsessions, and some obsessions were better than others. Certainly, P-Noy’s obsession with fighting corruption, if it might be called that, was more preferable to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s obsession, a certifiable one, of clinging to power. P-Noy’s obsession held no taint of self-interest, Arroyo’s obsession held no taint of national interest. P-Noy’s obsession was a source of hope, Arroyo’s obsession was a cause for despair. P-Noy’s obsession pushed the country forward, Arroyo’s obsession held the country back.

However you look at P-Noy’s efforts to hound Arroyo—and by extension Corona—to the ends of the earth, you can’t see it as something P-Noy is doing for himself, for his career, for his relatives. That is what makes it pure. Corona of course has tried to taint it by insisting that P-Noy is just getting back at him for his decisions on Hacienda Luisita, a thing so utterly lacking in believability I’ve wondered for a while why he kept harping at it. (I know it lacks traction because I’ve monitored reader interest in Inquirer’s online version and found Hacienda Luisita to be one of those topics that least piques it.) Then it hit me last Thursday.

P-Noy’s greatest strength, as he showed at his inspirational best in La Consolacion, is the largeness of spirit of his anticorruption campaign, which partakes of the largeness of the spirit of Edsa. Cleansing the country of its dregs is giving our children a better world than the one we, who have only 20 years or so left in this world, have had to cope with. It’s for the future, it’s for their future. And if you bear any love, or malasakit, for your children, it’s for our future as well. You can’t have something purer, or more inspirational, than that. If that well could somehow be poisoned by a drop of vested, or worse petty, interest, then well and good for the poisoners.

It won’t work, Mr. Corona.

Two is how much is riding on this impeachment. I did say much the same thing when P-Noy’s detractors gleefully predicted he would become a lame-duck president if the impeachment court acquits Corona. True enough, it would make the anticorruption campaign “extremely difficult, if not impossible” to prosecute, to borrow P-Noy’s own words. That won’t make him a lame-duck president, that will make us a lame-duck country.

Doubtless, P-Noy will be attacked by his enemies for trying to convict Corona outside of the impeachment court. Doubtless, he will be depicted by his enemies as overstepping the bounds of law. But his chafing at the leash is not just understandable, it is commendable. It’s not merely that the senator-judges have already ceded their power and independence by agreeing that the very people who ought to be dragged to court themselves have every right to say what they may and may not do. Which is alarming enough in itself. It is also that what is at stake is the future of the country. What is at stake is the one chance, under a President who has the decency and determination to do it, to change our path, our direction, our trajectory once and for all. What is at stake is the one opportunity to give our children a less poisonous world.

Corona is acquitted, and we might as well resign ourselves to never-ending corruption; being crooked and shameless are not impeachable offenses, we may not rid ourselves of a Chief Justice who is “merely” so. We might as well resign ourselves to being the lepers of Asia. We might as well resign ourselves to being pathetic, abject and lame-duck, we deserve to be the toilet-bowl cleaners of the world.

That has never been the way of Edsa, whose anniversary we mark this weekend. Edsa has always said the power to change things lies in our hands.

About time we used it again.