GLOBAL BALITA

GLIMPSES
by Jose Ma. Montelibano

I cheered when former Miss International, Aurora Pijuan, joyfully and tearfully called me to share the good news of Efren Penaflorida winning the CNN Hero of the Year. Aurora’s son, TJ Manotoc, had introduced Efren to her after TJ himself became an inspired volunteer of Efren’s advocacy. With Aurora’s constant campaigning, and persistent reminders about voting online for Efren, I had spent many hours in the last few months entering Efren’s name to vote for him. Truly, Efren is a model of an ordinary Filipino becoming extraordinary and heroic by loving and helping the poor.

Efren’s feat becomes even more awesome when we consider that he achieved so much by his own effort, and by inspiring others to join his work. He did not share in the 1.4 trillion budget of the national government. To help the less fortunate among our young, Efren struggled to find resources. And when he  could not, he pushed a cart. In contrast, the World Bank reports that at least 30% of our national budget is lost to corruption. The beneficiaries of hundreds of billions that comprise the hidden wealth of the powerful drive in expensive cars but cannot help our needy young.

How many noble good works get loose change from government, if at all? How many millionaires and billionaires among thieves get the hundreds of billions of the people’s money? The answer to this question is the meat of the story of our governance. It is not the lack of sophisticated concepts and programs that technical staff can write up for politicians that shame us before the rest of the progressive world; it is the lack of character and courage that afflicts our officials and societal leaders in the face of temptation brought by power and its access to great wealth.

The corrupt among Filipinos who wield authority perpetuate and aggravate the poverty of tens of millions of their countrymen. These corrupt leaders and officials are traitors. They deserve the worst of punishment. For their crimes, even the return of the death sentence is too mild a compensation for the pain and misery they cause to so many. And the cowards among our religious leaders who are the only institutional force that can mitigate evil by the power of faith or religion will be cursed by the God who is taught to us as One who loves the poor above all. By their cowardice, they have sold the victims of corruption and poverty for thirty pieces of silver.

Evil is spawned by those who tolerate it, not only by those who abet it. Evil is empowered by those who have power. Who have power in our society? They, by commission, by cooperation, by tolerance or by cowardice, choose to empower evil. Some are worse than others as they empower evil with gusto. Others are guilty by their fear of confronting evil even when sworn to do so by the public office they occupy. They are no less accountable though they are less abominable.

Corruption breeds poverty but does not stop there. Corruption is not a passive illness; it is an aggressive cancer. Poverty is not enough a tragedy that satisfies the hunger of corruption, it needs violence as well. The cowardly who feared a confrontation with corruption only encouraged it to be more greedy, to be more demanding. At a certain point, the aggressors and the cowards combine to to build the structure of violence. Power is what makes corruption possible and viable, and power at all costs is the only option that is left to the corrupt.

The massacre in Mindanao is the fruit of evil spawned and empowered. Authority spawned that evil, and that evil has just killed so many innocent and defenseless Filipinos. They were defenseless because power would not defend them. Power instead chose to favor the evil with protection and more arms. The women and media practitioners who were killed by agents of evil were sacrificed by those with authority who believed that evil is necessary to stay in power, that evil is permissible when power and wealth is the pearl of great price.

It is hard to accept the death of so many, to gloss over the brutality and arrogance of those who have been spawned by authority gone crazy with lust for its own perpetuation. I must admit that everything in my soul is red with hate and thirsty for vengeance. I cry for the dead who had to be murdered just for some sense of anger to bring us beyond our fear and cowardice. Is my cry a lonely one? Do our officers and soldiers who bear arms understand that they, too, pulled the trigger, that they, too, raped the women, that they, too, beheaded fellow Filipinos if they had encouraged the evil of those who ordered and executed the heinous crimes, or even just tolerated them? How many more will have to die, how many more Filipinos must be murdered, raped and beheaded before those who are sworn to protect them will stop protecting their killers?

When evil goes on a rampage and instills more fear instead of rage at the injustice of it all, then humanity takes a dive. That makes us all the next target of corruption, poverty and violence. Our families, including the families of our armed forces and police, will be fair game to rape, death and beheading. We are not just a people shamed by the greed of our officialdom, by the cowardice of our moral leaders, by the abdication of our armed protectors, we have joined the journey to hell by not rising in outrage and taking collective action until evil spawned and empowered is crushed like a dirty cockroach.

Those who ask for sobriety better truly understand the meaning of sobriety and are motivated by it. Calls for sobriety can encourage, and have encouraged, evil to be more belligerent and rapacious. It is not sobriety that can stop those who are not inspired by virtue, it is a people rising to protect itself, our collective outrage, and the courage to fight, even die so, our families and our nation may live in decency and honor. ***
 

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“In bayanihan, we will be our brother’s keeper and forever shut the door to hunger among ourselves.”