Filipinos gone ‘blasé’ to corruption

The March 1 Inquirer editorial, “Restitution required,” was sort of a wake-up call, again, to the fact that the justice system in this country has really gone to the dogs. “Leaving the Marcoses unpunished is the mother lode of the virulent strain of impunity that has since afflicted the country. Every crook in government now thinks that if the biggest crooks of them all could get away with it, so could they…”

But who is to blame? The people’s short memory? I don’t think so. After about 30 years of being commissioned to go after the Marcos loot, what has the Presidential Commission on Good Government to show for all the millions of pesos it has spent to file recovery proceedings? Basically crumbs, half of which the new breed of crooks, parading as good government crusaders, were suspected of having helped themselves to!

The truth is, this country has grown blasé to the ineradicable culture of corruption. Stealing public funds is too lucrative to pass up. If you steal big, all that money can easily buy you impunity. It is no longer uncommon to hear people say, “let’s just move on”—“move on” to the next kleptocratic regime!  Does anyone care anymore that presidential candidate Jejomar Binay and his family are facing charges of massive corruption? Public reaction to such indictments has been: So what else is new?

The judiciary in this country is such a travesty, too. The courts have become dysfunctional. After almost 30 years in court, the important cases against the Marcoses are still pending??! A cache of their precious loot has been in the vaults of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and yet our courts have never put any one of them in jail? Are we really so hopeless?

Well, our own family has a case that has been pending for more than 20 years without the dark tunnel’s end anywhere in sight—nine years in the Regional Trial Court, seven years in the Court of Appeals, now five years in the Supreme Court and still counting!  People say that’s just normal!

While many may still be pinning hope on the Supreme Court under the supposedly no-nonsense Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, the latter seems to have turned out to be a red herring. The highest court of the land is still the most sluggish of all judicial slowpokes—with a backlog as heavy and suffocating as the whole stretch of Edsa on any given day—which she seems unable or disinclined to do anything about. It is such a terrible example to show to the lower courts.

Why can’t the Chief Justice hold the inept justices in the Supreme Court to account? What is she Chief Justice for?  What is she afraid of? That the “hostile” majority might gang up on her? What can they do to her? She is irremovable as head honcho whether they like it or not! Besides, she is said to be an uncompromising Bible-believer: “The Lord is with me. I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?” (Psalm 118:6)

—MELISSA SY QUIATAN, [email protected]