‘Confess, then live among poor’

Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle’s call for politicians and others involved in the alleged P10-billion pork barrel scam to go to the slums and experience what it is like to be poor was intended to move their hearts and make them repent. But repentance can be meaningful only if there is confession first.

All religious faiths should join the act to stop our society’s fast slide into the pit of moral decadence. Church and community leaders should keep watch and rally their respective flocks and constituencies against the onslaught of the devil “who, like a roaring lion, is roaming around day and night looking for its prey to devour.”

News of tragedies are all over: e.g., needy fishermen lost or killed in stormy seas as they sought to make a living in order to be able to feed their hungry families even as they had been warned by the Coast Guard against setting sail; overseas contract workers sexually harassed, by our own labor attachés if not by their foreign employers, with some of them coming back home to the Philippines in caskets.

If these stories cannot touch the consciences of the unscrupulous, maybe their living with the destitute and seeing, if not “experiencing,” their plight up close would.

Court cases have resulted in the fall guys getting penalized instead of the guilty. We have heard of prisoners found innocent after languishing in jail for so many years.

Hence the proposal of Fr. Ranhillo Aquino, dean of the law school of San Beda, for the creation of a watchdog against government corruption, which is needed in the pursuit of equal justice for all.

The call for the abolition of the pork barrel system, according to former national treasurer Leonor Briones, current head of Social Watch Philippines, is also very timely. To borrow a line or two from an Elvis Presley hit song, “Tomorrow will be too late. It’s now or never.”

On the other hand, well-meaning citizens/candidates need not worry about being (re-)elected as legislators because former senators Joker Arroyo and Ping Lacson have shown they can serve without touching pork barrel funds.

Meantime, the humblest thing the offenders can do is to plead guilty, so that the country will be spared another arduous Senate hearing or an equivalent probe. Forward to a better Philippines!

—ARMANDO LIBRANDO ALPAY
c/o judithalpay@yahoo.com