Thieves

We see them everyday. Everywhere we turn. Myriad reasons why we question the government, why we distrust people who possess, nay brandish, political power, why we look with suspicion at every public officer. Epaliticians. Kotong cops. Wang-wangs. Fixers in government offices.

But these are small-time; nothing compared to the massively corrupt who go scot-free, whistleblowers and tons of evidence notwithstanding.

A former colleague or employee exposes corruption in the millions. It is picked up by the national media. Those in their respective Executive, Legislative or Judiciary ivory towers are shaken for a moment. An enterprising politician or two vow to investigate the matter and get to the bottom of it. Sometimes an investigation in aid of re-election, er, legislation is conducted, usually protracted (read: for media mileage). Mass media runs it for a few weeks; a few months if the amount involved is in the hundred millions. And then, as quickly as it fired up, everything dies down. In some of the more unfortunate cases, the whistleblower dies with it.

We are all too familiar with this. Like any teleserye with an all-too-familiar plot. Watching it, we feel short-changed, dissatisfied. Until that teleserye is ended abruptly for failing to succeed in the ratings. The Filipino people only know so well. Too well, that some of us have just stopped caring altogether.

“I don’t want to watch anymore. I don’t want any part in it. It’s all just a waste of time.”

As we go on our merry way, the massively corrupt laugh some more, albeit nervously at first, right before they know for sure that they’re off the hook. In between sips of expensive wine, while lounging in their expensive sofas, in their expensive rooms, all cozy in their expensive robes. All charged to and paid for by the Filipino people.

We see them everyday. The corrupt who live off of my measly salary, and yours. It makes you wonder how they can sleep at night, their swollen heads resting on their eiderdown pillows, while you force yourself to get some shuteye on your thin mattress and too-short, and even thinner, blanket. If at all. The thought first angers you. How can life be so unfair? And then it depresses you, because you feel helpless, worthless, insignificant. And then you give you up. No more, you say. I don’t give a shit anymore. Wala rin naman akong magagawa.

You feel like your government failed you. Has been failing you over and over again. Countless times.

A woman is accused of pocketing Ten Billion Pesos of Priority Development Assistance Fund. Money that could have been used to ease poverty, to pay the annual gross minimum wage of about 90,000 Filipinos, to pay for the education of children whose parents have not seen the shadow of a classroom. The whistleblowers say that she took all of the Ten Billion Pesos, all for herself, shared only with her family and her political backers. At one point, it was claimed that she ordered the withdrawal of Seventy-Five Million Pesos, all in one day, when most of the population do not have Seventy-Five Pesos a day to live on. She supposedly bought and paid for premium residences, plural, when most of the population resort to illegal settling, living on houses on stilts, or under bridges, simply because they have nothing more.

News about this woman broke almost a month ago, but up to now, no decisive action has yet been taken by the government. It is about to fail you yet again. Almost one month – you know, even with your limited knowledge and education, that that period of time is long enough to make evidence disappear, to make paper trail vanish into thin air, to silence witnesses. Now you’re scared and even more depressed because knowing you are helpless, you look to the government, your so-called representatives, to do something about it. And they don’t. Without so much as a solid explanation.

Ten Billion Pesos. And the chance of holding accountable the perpetrators of possibly the biggest scam in Philippine history is slowly slipping through your fingers. Like sand in an hourglass, but this one you cannot turn upside down for a restart. Running out of time, but the people who are supposed to do something don’t.

You hang your head low, because your government is failing you, right before your very eyes.

Then you find out about a certain piece of government property sitting idly in the far-flung hills of Bataan. You join a tour of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, armed with a cloud of doubt as to how this Marcos offspring could be good for us. Then you learn about the nature of the plant; how it is different from or the same with other plants; its highly redundant safety features; how it is maintained by almost-selfless personnel; the costs and benefits of operating it. Most painful among the new learnings is this: what our country could have achieved had we decided to be pragmatic and make use of an idle, and expensive, government asset, instead of turning a blind eye in the name of righteous indignation. Anger and resentment which have outlived their usefulness and logic amid the more pressing needs of our people.

They tell you the plant is identical to one in South Korea, one of the many rich countries whose main source of energy is nuclear power. That makes you wonder what operating our plant can mean for our country. It emphasizes the magnitude of lost opportunities, just because our so-called representatives decided for us that we are better off not making use of that dictator-tainted behemoth.

You walk away slumped, knowing that your government has held you back from what you could have become, from opportunities in life which are now left unknown to you.

A woman who is said to have stolen Ten Billion Pesos is about to get away with it. And the Fifty Million Pesos necessary to maintain the plant had just been scrapped from the proposed national budget. A debilitating one-two punch.

You realize that money was not the only thing stolen from you because of this failure. Your very future was taken away. And now you’re languishing in abject poverty. Because your government failed you. So you give up. But should you?

You must ask yourself: ARE YOU TRULY HELPLESS? Is there really nothing you can do to remedy the situation? Are you relegated to becoming a minion of your supposed benefactors, employing violence on cue?

NO. Refuse, with utter vehemence. Rage, respectably, reasonably. Do not go blind with anger. Fuel yourself to make your life better, to make your person better, to uplift the lives of your family members in ways that do not trample on other people’s pursuit of their dreams. Dreams which are not so different from yours.

We are not helpless. We are made to believe that we are, but we know better. We have hands to work towards better lives, minds to conjure portraits of the goals that we want to achieve, eyes which can see the goodness even in scarcity, hearts through which the blood of heroes and the fuel to move forward flow.

We do not let our government fail us, because we know we deserve so much better. We must demand service. Accountability. Integrity. In the face of impunity, we do not bow down and look the other way simply because the perpetrators have money and power and we don’t. THAT IS OUR MONEY. THAT IS OUR POWER. THAT IS OUR FUTURE. We do not just sit there, waiting in vain, hoping they will return it graciously. We grab hold of it and yank it back with all our might from the clutches of the corrupt and greedy.

They say avarice is a deadly sin. Then we must make them pay with their lives. In prison.