An Appeal to Our Patriotic Countrymen: It Is Time To Move

There is great upheaval and dis­cus­sion in Philip­pine soci­ety about the NBN-ZTE con­tro­versy and the Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada tes­ti­mony about cor­rup­tion in the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment. This is major because Lozada accuses sev­eral high-profile indi­vid­u­als in gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the hus­band of the Pres­i­dent. As I write this, mobi­liza­tion is appar­ent among civil soci­ety groups and the Church against the administration.

I am post­ing here the reflec­tions of Mr. Lozada him­self. He was sup­posed to have writ­ten this last week­end while being held at the Sen­ate. While I may not agree with every­thing he said, I do agree with the dis­po­si­tion of self-reflection and ques­tion­ing that we have to be in, in order to come up with a stance against cor­rup­tion. The sys­temic dis-ease is over­whelm­ing and we often­times take the very stance/s he has men­tioned below.

The call to action is not spec­i­fied; and that is to the credit of Mr. Lozada. This is another cru­cial time in our nation’s his­tory, and I think we all have to pause and think and ask our­selves where we really stand. And how do we really react in cases like these. I think that is the les­son and chal­lenge of his reflec­tions. I have per­son­ally taken part in sev­eral mobi­liza­tions in the past–the anti-charter change ral­lies dur­ing Ramos’ time, the anti-Erap ral­lies that put Glo­ria to power, even the Oak­wood Mutiny where we pick­eted the EDSA Shrine–and I must admit that I also am feel­ing a “mobi­liza­tion fatigue” right now. I am tired and even cyn­i­cal of another EDSA. I do not want to join another rally that will only end up with the guilty being set free by exec­u­tive clemency. I per­son­ally do not know WHAT the next MOVE will be, or in what form it is sup­posed to take. But as in all things, dis­cern­ment and pru­dence is needed, if only to give direc­tion to our anger and dis­con­tent. And it is dis­cern­ment that ends in action–not a paral­y­sis of analysis.

We wait for things to unfold. But even as we wait, we remain vig­i­lant, because any­time, any day, there might be an oppor­tu­nity to take part.

AN APPEAL TO OUR PATRIOTIC COUNTRYMEN: IT IS TIME TO MOVE
Reflec­tions of Jun Lozada

“Once you achieved your aim of destroy­ing the sys­tem you fought against, do not leave a sin­gle trace or else the bad habits that were formed dur­ing the period of the dys­func­tional sys­tem and which still remains in the hearts and minds of the peo­ple, shall nur­ture this rem­nant and allow it to come back in a more vicious form.”

This is one of the three con­di­tions set forth by our beloved hero, Jose Rizal. This con­di­tion cap­tures the frame­work of action and shall act as the guid­ing prin­ci­ple in any post-game sce­nario that must be for­mu­lated as part of the prepa­ra­tion to undo this brazenly cor­rupt regime.

But before we con­sider any action to take, it is a must to first address the con­cerns and argu­ments of other indi­vid­u­als and sec­tors that I believe are crit­i­cal in cre­at­ing a broad base of sup­port for such an action.

The Arro­gant Mind­set – first of which are pur­vey­ors of the Per­ver­sity issue whose main con­tention is that tak­ing action may sim­ply result to a more seri­ously wors­ened sce­nario than the present one we are against. This is typ­i­fied by remarks such as “any action against the admin­is­tra­tion will only result to anger and chaos in the street, a sit­u­a­tion that can be taken advan­tage of by ide­o­log­i­cally and mil­i­tar­ily cohe­sive groups such as the CPP/NPA or the Right Wing mil­i­tary groups. This will be bad for the econ­omy and will only worsen the already bad situation.”

Let me warn you to look out for this arro­gant mind­set. It is arro­gant because it is their view that the uni­verse is totally pre­dictable, and that they are capa­ble of know­ing ahead all the unfore­seen, both the intended pur­pose and the unin­tended con­se­quences of such pur­po­sive social action. It is a fact that no per­son has been endowed with such a gift that bor­ders on the Divine.

The Insult­ing Mind­set — Sec­ond are the believ­ers of the Futil­ity issue, whose main con­tention is that any action taken will sim­ply result in the same thing we are fight­ing against. This is typ­i­fied by remarks such as “Kahit ano pang gawin natin, kahit sino pang ila­gay mo dyan, pare-pareho lang ang mga yan! Ganun pa rin ang kalalagyan natin, mang­nanakaw din lang ang papalit dyan!” (What­ever we do, who­ever is in power will do the exact same thing! We will just end up where we began. A dif­fer­ent set of thieves will just take over!”)

Fil­ipinos who say these words are insult­ing our entire race. They are con­demn­ing all of us as inca­pable of patri­o­tism and love for one another. It seems that they are the major­ity now. They may have the num­bers, but they are wrong. I’ve always believed that real strength does not come with num­bers but with commitment.

The Untrust­wor­thy Mind­set – Third are the pro­po­nents of the jeop­ardy issue, whose main con­tention is that any action taken will be too costly for the intended pur­pose of remov­ing a morally cor­rupt admin­is­tra­tion. This is typ­i­fied by remarks such as “Hin­tayin nalang natin hang­gang 2010, any­way, mahigit 2 taon na lang yan. Baka pag ginalaw yan, mas lalo pang masak­tan ang ekonomiya at maghi­rap pa tayo lalo.” (Let us just wait for the 2010 elec­tions; any­way, it’s just 2 years away. If we do any­thing now, our econ­omy will just suf­fer and we’ll end up even poorer.)

These types of state­ments are usu­ally observed from peo­ple who are not will­ing to do the right action now for fear that they may not have the courage to do what is right in the future. Watch out for peo­ple who think like this, for they will be the prac­ti­tion­ers of the same cor­rupt prac­tices that you are now fight­ing against once they are the ones in power.

What alter­na­tive action can we suggest?

Take action together. There seems to be a com­mon agenda among all sec­tors to erad­i­cate state-sponsored cor­rup­tion in the coun­try, as prac­ticed by the cur­rent leader and her imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sors. This shared goal will be enough to put together a sober and well thought out post sce­nario plan that will address the con­cerns of the first group in a syn­ergy that has cer­tainly more chances of suc­cess com­pared to a num­ber of sep­a­rately con­cep­tu­al­ized plans by dif­fer­ent inde­pen­dent groups.

Inac­tion is going to be more expen­sive both in short term cost and long term goals. The short term cost of this state-sponsored cor­rup­tion is going to be enor­mous if mea­sured in total peso cost. Our quick esti­mate just for the cur­rent Chi­nese projects will run into tens of bil­lions of pesos. But the more costly and hid­den cost is the long-term dam­age to our gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions, which will now have a new stan­dard for pub­lic ser­vice that says “Cor­rup­tion pays as long as you steal big. Only the small goes to jail.” This argu­ment will blow the sec­ond and third groups’ argu­ments for not tak­ing action, because it is more costly and will not be ‘busi­ness as usual’ even if a new group takes over government.

His­tory will vin­di­cate us. The his­tory of our nation has repeat­edly shown that Fil­ipinos do not pun­ish a sit­ting admin­is­tra­tion for polit­i­cal and author­i­tar­ian mis­deeds but rather only upon gross moral trans­gres­sions such as exem­pli­fied by Rizal’s death by the Spaniards, Moi­ses Padilla’s death from the hands of a Quirino hench­man in Negros, Ninoy’s mur­der from Mar­cos’ thugs and Tessie Aquino’s jig about the sealed enve­lope in the Erap Sen­ate. The Fil­ipino peo­ple are now being sub­jected to such gross moral abuse in the ZTE-NBN deal, the bribery scan­dal, the Garci affair and other out­right and bla­tant lies to the people.

“Why be a sin­gle stone alone out there in the field, if you can be part of a great mon­u­ment of the Fil­ipino people?”

Lum­abas ang mabubut­ing Pilipino!