Will We Ever Get It?
Most people with cable television watched intently the Senate hearings concerning corruption in the highest government offices in the land. There was live blogging and this being the Philippines, there certainly was no shortage of comments or opinions from our national surplus of pundits.
Many people were secretly expecting the government to fall after the former economic planning minister exposed the attempts of the election chief to influence, through brazen bribery the awarding of a broadband contract with a Chinese corporation. It was as if we had never known that official corruption officially existed all along and as if we expected our newly-minted Senators to ferret out the truth. What a joke! The old reliable clowns all acted with reliable predictability. The Diva staged a walkout. Our learned protectors displayed all sorts of legal legerdemain with the sole express purpose of protecting their private playing grounds. And the former economic planning minister punted on his chance to become a hero by simply doing his job and remain true to the Filipino people he swore to serve. Instead he woefully fell short and mumbled a series of excuses averring executive privilege.
These are the times that try my soul. Corruption is so pervasive and lethal yet we are all so wrapped-up with our personal loyalties. There are literally thousands of upper-level government employees who know that corruption is a daily event and while most of them are not active participants, none of them would even consider rocking their sinecures and blowing the whistle on their patrons.
Will we ever get it? The problem appears to be much worse than we thought. We all assumed they were being born at the rate of one a minute. It’s turning out to be a generation-wide pestilence. We have seen the suckers, and they are us.
2 comments:
That senate hearing looked like a gathering of mob leaders. I was just waiting for a Robert Deniro to hit somebody with a baseball bat.
Abalos must have a reason for keeping mum. Yes he denied having offerred a bribe to Neri, which we expected him to do. But the bigger question is why did not President Arroyo pursue further what actually happened after being told of this bribe offer from one administration official to another?
Neri would have no reason to lie to the president.
Furthermore, who appointed Abalos to broker this NBN deal? We all know he is the elections commissioner, but what has this got to do with a broadband deal?
Senator Myriam Santiago, I think, walked out after believing nobody was telling the truth. If we can only get more concrete evidence, hmmmm, that is going to catch a cast of characters that may topple the current administration. But who among them, besides Neri, will cast the next stone?
This, too, shall pass unless we pursue it to arrive at what most of us think is the truth just bubbling beneath the surface. Maybe, just maybe, the culprits will start talking.
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