Tolerating Corruption is Similar to

Committing it, too..

By Apolinario Villalobos

With the state of the nation wherein the halls of the governments are reverberating with the sound of corruption, colleagues of identified government personalities, and even the President cannot just simply wash their hands and insist on their innocence. They are not deaf and blind not to be aware of what are happening around them. They should stop playing charade and act out innocent roles to save themselves from the scandals that are rocking the already ailing political system.

The issue on the fake NGOs and buying of the lawmakers’ budgets by NGO operators, such as Napoles who is now being charged with layers of cases, is one instance. Lawmakers have been quoted before as saying that they were aware of such happening, in fact offered, but they did not “bite” the tempting proposals.  If they knew about all those shenanigans to be happening around them, why did they not do something at the earliest possible time so that more harm to the government coffer would have been prevented?

Unfortunately for them, as the scandal ballooned, most of them were dragged, but they valiantly fought for their innocence which the Filipinos no longer believed. With much effort, they countered accusations with their “ignorance” about the manipulation being done to their budget. Not even the President cannot shy away from the scrutiny, as even the alleged misappropriation of his PDAF, has been questioned by the Supreme Court.

Do the above situations show that our government is so pathetic that even the supposedly intelligent officials voted by the people to their positions do not have enough common sense in checking what are happening to their budgets? Are they not aware of their responsibilities such that every time anomalies occur, what they immediately do is just put up some kind of a defense to save their image? Or, they are just desperately making obvious cover-ups!