The ethics of Jejomar Binay

“The moral problem is poverty,” declared Vice President Jejomar Binay at the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s 41st Philippine Business Conference. The sound bite must have projected well at the forum; Binay has repeated it elsewhere. But what does the statement mean?

PCCI leaders vowed to hold the presidential candidates hosted at the conference accountable for their campaign pronouncements, as indeed all voters should. Initiatives to enforce accountability, however, can only come after the candidate has assumed the presidency and all the formal powers and informal influence that the office commands.

Voters have greater power over the candidates before, not after, their election. But if voters cannot now demand accountability for deeds to be done in the future, they can and must hold the candidates accountable for the words they speak today. Those who host the candidates must ensure that speakers clearly explain their statements so that the audience understands exactly what they are saying.

Candidates will be careful with their prepared, written statements. Responses to unplanted questions from the floor should be more revealing. Organizers of high-profile meetings would do voters a signal service if they would make the transcripts of the open forum widely available in the digital space.

Hard questions can be asked honestly, without hostility, and with all due courtesy to the invited guests. Some questions just beg to be asked. What exactly did VP Binay mean when he said “The moral problem actually is not corruption, the moral problem is poverty”?

Binay is courting public support for his presidential bid. Because he is also facing five plunder and graft complaints in the Office of the Ombudsman, the quote was provocative and seemingly self-serving. What was needed at the forum was the chance for a follow-up question. To be fair, the Vice President should have been given the chance to explain himself.

The statement explicitly denies the connection that P-Noy draws between corruption and poverty: “Kung walang korap, walang mahirap.” We do not need to accept the slogan as literally true. Even granting the total eradication of corruption, there will still be relative poverty; many will feel poor because they do not have as much as the others. But to reject any link between, say, the theft of resources earmarked for the poor and those they actually receive flies against common sense.

Is Binay suggesting that corruption is not a moral problem? This may explain why he is so dismissive of the Senate hearings on corruption in Makati when he was its mayor. His claim that he had already addressed the issues also deserved pursuing, as it placed public forums and press conferences at which he has spoken on the same level as the formal Senate investigations.

Accepting corruption as a moral problem easily leads to the proposition that those engaged in corruption are immoral. If “the moral problem is poverty,” does Binay consider the poor immoral?

These are not idle questions. It is not uncommon to hear the poor blamed for their poverty, because they are allegedly lazy, short-sighted, tempted to vices. These sentiments are even understandable, coming from people who have managed by dint of hard work to raise themselves above the poverty line.

Calvinist Protestants believe God had predestined who among the faithful would receive eternal salvation. The doctrine encouraged the appreciation of material success as a mark of God’s favor and assurance of inclusion among the predestined elect. In research regarded as seminal in the discipline, the sociologist Max Weber credited this “Protestant Ethic,” that yoked together religious zeal and the profit motive, with driving the rise of capitalism and economic development in Northern Europe.

The belief that prosperity in this life anticipates salvation in the hereafter sanctified the push to accumulate wealth through a life of piety, industriousness and frugality. Perhaps, the disposition among many Filipinos to see material success as a sign of divine benevolence (“pinagpala ng Diyos”) and, therefore, assumed as deserved, resembles the Calvinist perspective.

In this modern, more materialistic age, unfortunately, profit right now appears more important than paradise after death. Filipino political humor, perhaps hiding a grain of truth, reflects this orientation. Poverty is not merely a sin, it is a crime. What must be investigated among politicians, as the joke goes, is not unexplained wealth, but unexplained poverty. Even worse, poverty among those who could easily be rich is not only a sin and a crime, it is also a sign of stupidity. How can such people be smart, if they are poor?

VP Binay’s statements at the PCCI forum are open to interpretations that do not put him in a favorable light. He really should explain to the public and especially to the poor what he meant by these statements and their implications for the ethical standards he would uphold should he become president.

Edilberto C. de Jesus (edcdejesus@gmail.com) is professor emeritus at the Asian Institute of Management.

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