Smudging values

Headlines scream about Senator Miriam Santiago clashing, over pork scam lists with Panfilo Lacson, former fugitive who morphed into quarter-before-midnight rehabilitation czar. That is underpinned by a feudal political system that that sports a thin veneer of democratic governance.

Take the Estradas.  Manila mayor and cashiered president Joseph Estrada, along with son Senator Jinggoy Estrada, tongue-lashed their kin:  Senator JV Ejercito. Why? He signed the Blue Ribbon Committee report on the pork scam. It recommended charges against JV’s half-brother, plus senators Juan Ponce Enrile and   Bong Revilla. 

“Erap reprimanded” him, JV said. He merely echoed the stand by the padre de familia and Jinggoy, that “all bogus NGOs be probed."  Did the patriarch understand?  “I hope,” JV said.

Not so with his half-brother. Jinggoy fumed, “I’m trying to make myself look good at his expense... I'll have to be honest. We are not close.”

At last count, 178 family dynasties sprawled in 73 of 80 provinces. The Binays have four members in Makati. The Marcoses seek to reinforce rehabilitation from People Power exile.  Ampatuan family elders face trial for the 2009 Maguindanao massacre. But over 80 Ampatuans from jail campaigned for public office.

Dynasties “make up 0.00001667 percent of the country’s over 15 million families,” an earlier study, by political analyst Roland Simbulan, notes. They’ve hoarded power for the past 30 years, churning out seven presidents, two vice presidents, 42 senators and 147 congressmen.

“Political inbreeding embeds penury,” Asian Institute of Management’s Ronald Mendoza told AFP. Poverty levels, in areas ruled by dynasties, are 5 percentage points worse than in those that are represented by politicians without family links. Electing politicians from a constricted gene pool shreds “the potential of countless other talents.” 

Indeed, “for all the trappings of a national government we are not  far  from the era of the barangay, and we conduct our affairs pretty much in the manner of Lapu-Lapu and Humabon, the late historian Horacio de la Costa noted in his paper: “Justice and Development.” “The... congressman who moves around with his bodyguards is not much different from the datu surrounded by his retainers.”

As a Jesuit seminarian in World War II, De la Costa was imprisoned in Fort Santiago and received the Medal of Freedom  from the US. After ordination, he completed his doctorate at Harvard and taught at Ateneo.  He served, in Rome, as assistant to the father general of Society of Jesus. He became the first Filipino provincial superior of the Jesuits here.

Dynastic structures gut national and public values, de la Costa argued. “Since the nation can do little for us, why then we should we do much for the nation? And thus we render the nation all the more impotent, in turn aggravating the need for taking private measures to protect private interests....

“Surely, it is not only the captives who should be told about freedom, but also those who hold them in captivity. “To make them see. That is the crux of the problem. For quite often, those who have the power that riches give use it oppressively, not because they are wicked as because they are blind.

“They only see the face of power.... that brings fulfilment of want and whim. They do not see the other face of power... that says little children must go hungry that the powerful may be fed. They do not see. They must be made to see.”

“That is why Christ did many things during his public life which may appear at first glance to be inconsistent. He was poor man, a carpenter and the son of carpenter. He spent most of his time among to the poor, healing their diseases, driving out devils ..., teaching them how to pray.”

This task raises questions. What are the nation’s goals? “What does a Filipino expect of himself and for himself? For the Philippines, these are really neither formulated nor felt by the community .Some countries, in contrast, have clear national goals.  If the people cannot develop goals to be achieved, there’s no way of directing the bureaucracy.

The nation is not a monolithic mass, but fractured into smaller groups. They pull together, pull apart or simply pull for themselves. “Often inert, they’re either overwhelmed by helplessness or uncaring. And disoriented. The nation acts only through these groups: from, families, labor unions to religious organizations. When active, they keep the state bureaucracy properly oriented.

“This, for a country like the Philippines, which really has had no great experience of communal democracy is very difficult. But the process has to be undergone.”

The Church should be deeply rooted in the communal life of the people. Like government, (it) is far removed from it.” Our schools unfortunately enlarge the gulf. And there is the split in the very mind of the Filipino.... 

“We have a sentimental attachment to what is Filipino. But that is all there is to it... How can our attachment for the country be effective when we neither know what is or where she is going.

People therefore ask what should we do?  De la Costa added:  “We can only go back to basic ideas: (a) build communities; (b) link the communities with common goals; and (c) recapture the bureaucracy.”