A Government of Brigands
According to St. Augustine, “there are people whose only goal in life is to gain a reputation for excellence in proportion to their capacity to practice deception on others. So great is the blindness of such men that they glory even in their blindness.”
Poverty has been the lot of our people since the discovery of these islands by Ferdinand Magellan for the West. Throughout the centuries, Filipinos have always stood on the verge of greatness but have never quite made it to the Promised Land. Along with poverty, oppression of the poor, either by foreign or by native rulers, has been the norm in our national life.
Our country’s economic landscape is littered with the unfulfilled dreams of millions of our countrymen who live in incomprehensible poverty in a land rich in natural resources and blessed with a people whose wealth lies in their talents, skills, and intelligence if only given half a chance. Robbed of their hopes for a better life, many of them live in squalor in shacks and lean-tos and cardboard boxes and cemetery plots because their political leadership has failed them.
Rather than being bold and visionary in bridging the wide gulf between the rich and the poor, their leaders have become the very instruments of continuing the oppression. How many times have we seen them mouth platitudes, for example, in pushing land reform only to recoil when their own selfish interests are threatened? Think Hacienda Luisita. How many of its peasants have died fighting for their basic human right to own a piece of land that they and their forebears have tilled for ages? And why does this vast landholding remain exempt from land reform? [Note: In 2012, the Philippine Supreme Court ruled with finality to distribute the vast landholdings owned by the family of President Aquino to some 200 farmer-beneficiaries ending their decades-old struggle to own a piece of the property under the Agrarian reform program.]
The anointed saint of Edsa became president, and yet it was during her term when the Mendiola Massacre occurred in the afterglow of the 1986 People Power Revolution. As events have shown, that so-called revolution has proved itself a failure, not worth the sweat and blood of the starving masses who were betrayed in the end by the rich who, after grabbing power, have enriched themselves further on the back of the poor. It used the people to oust a hated dictator only to restore the greedy oligarchs back to their old perch in the rarefied air of a corrupt society.
The greatest challenge of the next government is how to dismantle the tentacles of corruption that has killed the hopes and dreams of our people and have dehumanized them to the point of selling their bodies if not their souls in order to survive. At the same time, it must also allow wealth to trickle down from the very top to the very bottom of the economic rung without dispensing favors to thieving friends and relatives of those in power through graft and corruption in and outside the government.
“In the absence of justice,” St. Augustine reminds us, “what are governments but organized robberies? For what are bands of brigands but…groups of men, under the rule of a leader, bound together by common agreement. Dividing their booty according to a settled principle. If this band of robbers, by recruiting more robbers, acquires enough power to…subdue the whole population, then it can with fuller right assume the title of kingdom, which in the public estimation is conferred upon it not by renunciation of greed but by the increase of impunity.”
For far too long powerful families, in their sense of entitlement, have subverted our laws so that they can maintain their status in society. There’s a pattern to their madness in clinging to power, divvying up the allegiances of members of their clan to make sure their family retains a connection to either side of the feuding political forces. This is seen in the current political turmoil where one sibling sings the praises of Macapagal-Arroyo while the other fires broadsides at her. The end result is the preservation of their family interests when a regime change does occur.
Something is terribly wrong when only a few families control the destiny of the nation. It’s rather hard to imagine how an all-powerful clan can have a stranglehold on almost every facet of our daily life from water to electricity to radio and television to telephone. Yet, it’s a reality in our country.
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is as much a victim of this ugly reality as she is its number one perpetrator. She came to office by foul means on the wings of what the international news media has called “mob rule,” but which a prostituted Supreme Court has given its judicial fiat.
They declared a vacancy in the presidency for reasons not found in the Constitution but one based on the alleged “state of mind” of then President Joseph Estrada as supposedly gleaned from the journals of a discredited Estrada associate. She’s now reaping the result of legalizing mob rule and enshrining it in our national life by conspiring with those who jumped the Estrada ship to insure that their perks and other entitlements would continue. These same cast of characters have made raiding the country’s coffers a virtue.
Macapagal-Arroyo came to power promising much-needed reforms but ended a miserable failure in freeing our people from the grasp of poverty. Instead of delivering results, she showed unfailing devotion to a corrupt system where graft and corruption is a way of life. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth as the daughter of a former president, much was expected from her because much was given to her and to her family. She rode the moral high horse as a crusader against a predecessor that she denounced as a coddler of jueteng lords. Look at how hard she has fallen!
The presidency is a sacred trust but she has proved unworthy to be its keeper. She and her co-conspirators have violated their oaths to be faithful to the Constitution by padding her votes to insure victory against Fernando Poe Jr. in the 2004 presidential elections, among other high crimes and misdemeanors.
She has packed government agencies with her friends and the cronies and relatives of her husband. These thieving friends and confederates have made cash cows of these agencies, accepted jueteng payoffs, and are being given a free pass for their crimes against the people.
Her husband’s sense of entitlement is apparent: he thumbs down the rule of law instead of upholding it. He has made a show of his “exile” to the lap of luxury in the United States instead of being summoned back to the country to answer the very serious charges against him. Macapagal-Arroyo makes matters worse by refusing to resign, and in doing so dragging the country down along with her.
There’s wisdom in the clamor for a caretaker revolutionary government. What the country needs is a thorough housecleaning that will remove systemic iniquities in our society from top to bottom.
In choosing our next leader(s), we should keep in mind that, according to St. Augustine, “there are people whose only goal in life is to gain a reputation for excellence in proportion to their capacity to practice deception on others. So great is the blindness of such men that they glory even in their blindness.”
If we had a leader who puts the welfare of the people ahead of her greed, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in right now and justice would prevail. Sadly, what we have in our midst is what St. Augustine correctly described as a band of brigands.
As we look beyond the Macapagal-Arroyo regime, these words by George Santayana should haunt us: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Enough of the musical chairs in government where only the faces change but the oppression of the poor remains.
Our country’s economic landscape is littered with the unfulfilled dreams of millions of our countrymen who live in incomprehensible poverty in a land rich in natural resources and blessed with a people whose wealth lies in their talents, skills, and intelligence if only given half a chance. Robbed of their hopes for a better life, many of them live in squalor in shacks and lean-tos and cardboard boxes and cemetery plots because their political leadership has failed them.
Rather than being bold and visionary in bridging the wide gulf between the rich and the poor, their leaders have become the very instruments of continuing the oppression. How many times have we seen them mouth platitudes, for example, in pushing land reform only to recoil when their own selfish interests are threatened? Think Hacienda Luisita. How many of its peasants have died fighting for their basic human right to own a piece of land that they and their forebears have tilled for ages? And why does this vast landholding remain exempt from land reform? [Note: In 2012, the Philippine Supreme Court ruled with finality to distribute the vast landholdings owned by the family of President Aquino to some 200 farmer-beneficiaries ending their decades-old struggle to own a piece of the property under the Agrarian reform program.]
The anointed saint of Edsa became president, and yet it was during her term when the Mendiola Massacre occurred in the afterglow of the 1986 People Power Revolution. As events have shown, that so-called revolution has proved itself a failure, not worth the sweat and blood of the starving masses who were betrayed in the end by the rich who, after grabbing power, have enriched themselves further on the back of the poor. It used the people to oust a hated dictator only to restore the greedy oligarchs back to their old perch in the rarefied air of a corrupt society.
The greatest challenge of the next government is how to dismantle the tentacles of corruption that has killed the hopes and dreams of our people and have dehumanized them to the point of selling their bodies if not their souls in order to survive. At the same time, it must also allow wealth to trickle down from the very top to the very bottom of the economic rung without dispensing favors to thieving friends and relatives of those in power through graft and corruption in and outside the government.
“In the absence of justice,” St. Augustine reminds us, “what are governments but organized robberies? For what are bands of brigands but…groups of men, under the rule of a leader, bound together by common agreement. Dividing their booty according to a settled principle. If this band of robbers, by recruiting more robbers, acquires enough power to…subdue the whole population, then it can with fuller right assume the title of kingdom, which in the public estimation is conferred upon it not by renunciation of greed but by the increase of impunity.”
For far too long powerful families, in their sense of entitlement, have subverted our laws so that they can maintain their status in society. There’s a pattern to their madness in clinging to power, divvying up the allegiances of members of their clan to make sure their family retains a connection to either side of the feuding political forces. This is seen in the current political turmoil where one sibling sings the praises of Macapagal-Arroyo while the other fires broadsides at her. The end result is the preservation of their family interests when a regime change does occur.
Something is terribly wrong when only a few families control the destiny of the nation. It’s rather hard to imagine how an all-powerful clan can have a stranglehold on almost every facet of our daily life from water to electricity to radio and television to telephone. Yet, it’s a reality in our country.
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is as much a victim of this ugly reality as she is its number one perpetrator. She came to office by foul means on the wings of what the international news media has called “mob rule,” but which a prostituted Supreme Court has given its judicial fiat.
They declared a vacancy in the presidency for reasons not found in the Constitution but one based on the alleged “state of mind” of then President Joseph Estrada as supposedly gleaned from the journals of a discredited Estrada associate. She’s now reaping the result of legalizing mob rule and enshrining it in our national life by conspiring with those who jumped the Estrada ship to insure that their perks and other entitlements would continue. These same cast of characters have made raiding the country’s coffers a virtue.
Macapagal-Arroyo came to power promising much-needed reforms but ended a miserable failure in freeing our people from the grasp of poverty. Instead of delivering results, she showed unfailing devotion to a corrupt system where graft and corruption is a way of life. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth as the daughter of a former president, much was expected from her because much was given to her and to her family. She rode the moral high horse as a crusader against a predecessor that she denounced as a coddler of jueteng lords. Look at how hard she has fallen!
The presidency is a sacred trust but she has proved unworthy to be its keeper. She and her co-conspirators have violated their oaths to be faithful to the Constitution by padding her votes to insure victory against Fernando Poe Jr. in the 2004 presidential elections, among other high crimes and misdemeanors.
She has packed government agencies with her friends and the cronies and relatives of her husband. These thieving friends and confederates have made cash cows of these agencies, accepted jueteng payoffs, and are being given a free pass for their crimes against the people.
Her husband’s sense of entitlement is apparent: he thumbs down the rule of law instead of upholding it. He has made a show of his “exile” to the lap of luxury in the United States instead of being summoned back to the country to answer the very serious charges against him. Macapagal-Arroyo makes matters worse by refusing to resign, and in doing so dragging the country down along with her.
There’s wisdom in the clamor for a caretaker revolutionary government. What the country needs is a thorough housecleaning that will remove systemic iniquities in our society from top to bottom.
In choosing our next leader(s), we should keep in mind that, according to St. Augustine, “there are people whose only goal in life is to gain a reputation for excellence in proportion to their capacity to practice deception on others. So great is the blindness of such men that they glory even in their blindness.”
If we had a leader who puts the welfare of the people ahead of her greed, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in right now and justice would prevail. Sadly, what we have in our midst is what St. Augustine correctly described as a band of brigands.
As we look beyond the Macapagal-Arroyo regime, these words by George Santayana should haunt us: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Enough of the musical chairs in government where only the faces change but the oppression of the poor remains.
(The foregoing article first appeared in a Manila newspaper column at the height of the 2005 political crisis in the Philippines precipitated by media revelations that then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had cheated in the 2004 elections to stay in office for another six years.)
