The Rathaus

No, a “Rathaus” is not necessarily a house for rats although, given the latest revelation on the ever-deepening scandal involving the Priority Development Assistance Fund, many Filipinos might indeed think it so, more as a scathing commentary on Philippine politics rather than as an unintended misconception on the word “rat.”

The spelling might be exact, the definitions, at least in colloquial English, nearly similar. Rats are rodents, or as we might know them in the Philippine setting, from the one syllable “rat” to the two-syllable “rodent,” we take a short leap and come up with the following three-syllable words: “se-na-tor,” “con-gress-man,” or even “pre-si-dent,” perhaps to mean pretty much the same thing.

The subtlety, or its obvious absence, as we cannot but help throwing in an innuendo as commentary, is deliberate. By leaping from definitions and immediately alluding to politics, believe it or not, we quite accidentally stumble on the true meaning of “Rathaus.”

In Europe a Rathaus is a building such as a burgomaster’s council hall, or any edifice serving as the seat of government. It is derived from “Ratusz,” the Polish word for city hall.

However, should we, quite by chance, quickly misconstrue a Rathaus’ etymology as originating from rodents, that, too, would be just fine. In the Philippines, many government officials deserve the allusion.

Many Europeans we know are not as critical of their government as are Filipinos despite their higher taxes, their government-imposed austerity measures, and an extremely painful recovery from a financial crisis imported from across the Atlantic.

Note our relative blessings compared to our European kin. Our expanded value-added tax rate is 12 percent. France’s is 20 percent, up from 19.6 percent. In Spain it is 21 percent. Other European economies are mulling increasing theirs to 21 percent.

Greece has substantially reduced its socioeconomic welfare services. In Finland and Sweden the retirement age was increased, making welfare benefits less accessible. Throughout Europe such decreases are a function of three major factors—increasing fiscal deficits, the influx of immigrants and refugees, and the global financial crisis.

No European country distributes hard cash to people, whether poor or poorer. Never mind that there are states northeast of the Adriatic with remnant command economies. On the other hand, highly liquid capitalist Philippines distributes billions of pesos in doles to mostly nontaxpayers.

And as most in the European Union and outside it would be lucky to measure economic growth using the fingers of one hand, we use two as we boast about our historically high 7.2 percent gross domestic product growth rate.

And yet, despite these blessings, our government has managed to incite us so that we have gone beyond being critical and sunk into a dark and despairing abyss, and from there come up to actually despise resident rodents who infest our Rathaus.

The reason is understandable. It has to do with the lords of the manor—the rats.  Briefly forming a graphic picture of a rat-infested house, let’s seize the moment and juxtapose the images.

In the Philippines, the sole authority to create taxes is vested on Congress. Likewise, the sole authority to determine the manner of government spending is vested upon that same Congress as that elected body deliberates on and subsequently passes the General Appropriations Act—the yearly government budget that sets expenditure amounts against the bureaucracy that, theoretically, applies these to public services.

Such protocol was inherited from the United States, where crooks also abound, though not quite as lumped together as they are on Batasan Hills and along Manila Bay. Everything is technically hunky-dory in the fiscal processes, though, up until that last phrase in the foregoing paragraph.

From the PDAF scandal, the funds we supply via taxes so that the congressional budget and expenditure machinery might actually start goes through a hidden political-patronage labyrinth where our money eventually ends up in the pockets of those same legislators who begged for our trust.

Whether the “rat” allusion is based on unintentional misconceptions or deliberate malice, the Filipino interpretation of rodent infestations is amazingly apt and accurate. More so now that we see the magnitude of the PDAF anomaly.

The latent list of PDAF conspirators has 25 senators. Admittedly, this spans different congresses. But the number is not just a quorum—a statistic typically unheard-of in the Senate. It is embarrassingly above and beyond the whole Senate’s complete roll.

A similar statistic applies to congressmen implicated. There are more in the list than can be found on the plenary floor after the roll call at the House.

The PDAF list itself is not surprising. Nor is the number of lawmakers implicated. We must, however, remind ourselves that we are civilized and that these Rathaus officials remain statutorily innocent until we prove them guilty, not via speedy, smooth and cost-free public opinion, but by applying time-consuming, nerve-wracking and expensive due processes in a court that can actually jail them instead of the more expedient pillorying, public hanging, or beheading they might deserve.

It is at these times that we wane nostalgic and, reading old children’s tales, Dostoyevsky or  “Strafjustisz in alter Zeit,” as students of history, lore and invention, we yearn for a Pied Piper of Hamelin. Or better still, the fun-filled halcyon days of the Middle Ages and the Inquisition, as we admire early-day engineering innovations from the simple ball and chain, to the wooden rack, and the suddenly relevant, and magnificent, guillotine.

Dean dela Paz is a former investment banker and a consultant to the Joint Congressional Power Commission. He authored a book on energy governance tool kits and teaches finance, investment mathematics, and corporate strategy.