Politics, Greed and Misery...Sad Picture of the Filipino Society
Posted on Monday, 1 September 2014
Politics,
Greed, and Misery
…Sad
Picture of the Filipino Society
By Apolinario Villalobos
A big chunk of humanity that prefers
freedom should have been enjoying the best organizational principle or system –
democracy. With it, every member of the group is given the opportunity to bring
out what is in his mind. What is good for the majority is chosen, and everybody
has a fair chance of participation. The role of making policies are given to
the members chosen by the majority, and those chosen are supposed to be worthy
of their job. That is supposed to be the clean politics under democracy…under
the shadow of freedom.
Before the arrival of the Europeans, the
archipelagic makeup of the Philippines was effectively ruled by chieftains or
datus – by cluster of islands which was effective. It was our kind of
“democracy”, although, fraternal of sort. When foreign powers such as those of
Spain and America tried to subdue these islands and islets to become one
country, their kind of “democracy” was introduced. Spain even made use of the
cross to do it. The Americans, on the
other hand, made use of their educational system to “educate” the Filipinos on
how to live under their own kind of democracy.
The Filipinos wanted freedom, but what the
democratic government that the early leaders copied was that of America’s, a
country which is geographically cohesive. The system calls for a central
governing body which in the case of the Philippines, unfortunately, got based
at its northern part. The Philippines as a country of more than seven thousand
islands and islets is regionalized and for convenient governance, it is divided
into provinces. Expanding provinces are subdivided and the same is done with
the regions. The greatest set back of this setup is the lack of unifying structures
and communication system. Coordination among agencies and local government
modules is not smooth, hence, ineffective, and worse as found out most often –
absent! The total system is seen with loopholes and weak points. There is no
cohesive system in the governance of the country. It seems that the media is
more knowledgeable of what are happening through interviews of officials that
they conduct and concerned agencies know about them only from their printed
broadsheets and tabloids. On TV, even lawmakers are caught saying that they
only know of important matters from newspapers!
The feeling of being neglected developed
among the Filipinos in the far-flung southern islands of Mindanao, as well as,
those in the Visayas regions. This animosity bred the desire among the Muslim
Filipinos to have their own governing body, albeit, still “within” the scope of
the existing Constitution. Differences in religion and culture are made as
alibis. Those in the Visayas are beginning to develop the same line of thinking,
although, religion and culture are far from their mind as reasons.
Unfortunately for the Filipinos, the
loop-holed government system has bred abuse and greed among the
representatives, the lawmakers, the policy makers that they chose to represent their
ideals. Some of these people’s representatives wisely thought that they can
propose projects for their far-flung provinces, far from the prying eyes of the
central offices of the concerned agencies located in the far north of the
country. Without the regular checks, ghost projects proliferated. The local
branches of the agencies are themselves weak, hence, the poor implementation of
policies. Policing has practically become inutile. Worst, the people who are
supposed to be monitoring projects, are themselves, involved in anomalies. The
“opportunity” of making money, bred the idea of coming up with NGOs and
Foundations. And, because of the laxity in securing the government coffer, a
free-for-all exploits ensued. Investigations are ongoing. But will justice be
achieved, when those investigating, are themselves accused of involvement? Both
Congress and Senate have practically lost face and dignity in view of the
surmounting anomalies. The Filipinos in general have lost their respect to the
aforementioned institutions.
Simply put, the misery of the Filipinos
today, grew out of the abuse of lawmakers, and politicians, nurtured by their
boundless greed for money. Their abuse on the other hand, developed from the
knowledge that the country is not effectively welded by the so-called democracy
copied from the by-laws of America, so they seem to see loopholes just in every
provisions of the copied system that gave them the opportunity to exploit their
fellowmen!
Families of politicians just do not have
the heart to let go of their hold on the reins of power, so that, after the
father, the wife takes over, then the son, then the daughter, and so forth.
These greedy families invest millions of pesos that they were able to stash
away for coming election days, to be used as “compliments”. There is no letup
in how they spend the money that is actually people’s money stolen from the
government coffer. The popular consolation among these greedy politicians is
the thought of a much bigger “return” for such “investment”.
Finally, with the sickening system, the
poor Filipinos are left gasping for breath while exerting much effort to
survive in the deepening muck of misery.
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