By Col Dencio Acop (Ret), PhD
There was once a man in exile who did not have to come back home to the Philippines from Boston. But did because he believed that the Filipino was worth dying for. In some ways, I agree. But in other ways, I do not. In this brief opinion, I will discuss the Filipino’s innate problem with the common good, the pervasive lack of social justice in Filipino society, and thus the Filipino’s penchant for creating his own world of justice and good. While it is true that the recent elections in the Philippines clearly illustrate the glaring gaps in values that greatly divide Filipino society, the realities rooted in cultural history and regional biases must not be lost upon us even as these stare us in the face and yet we do not see them for what they are. We certainly live in interesting times, even biblical. The stark reversals between truth and lies, good and evil paint a worldly picture that is closer to Armageddon and the Second Coming more than it does World Peace. Christians now see China as the Anti-Christ and the Philippine pivot to the enemy of its predominant faith is as much a cause for great consternation as it is business as usual for political dynasties and clueless others simply out to benefit even from just the scraps.
A mere review of Philippine literature will reveal how the Filipino is incomparable when it comes to love for his family and people of his kind. But sorely lacking when it came to fighting for causes beyond even in matters of survival much less a bruised ego. Was it not just a little over a century before when power struggles between bourgeoisie and masa, and between pride and competence fed us right into the hands of our invaders? Was it not just 81 years ago during the last Great War when fellow Filipinos slept with the enemy and turned against their own people? And was it not just 50 years earlier when a greedy national leader pretended to correct the nation’s ills, dismantle the oligarchies, and create a ‘new society’ only to replace the displaced oligarchs with his own cronies, seduced the military to join the ranks of domestic elites, and made it to the Guinness Book of World Records for greatest robbery of his nation’s wealth? The situation continues. The Filipino chooses not leaders who epitomize values for the common good like honesty and hard work, competence and integrity. Moral leaders. What is brought to fore in this analysis is the Filipino who is anti-hero, then and now, because his hero is the one who can vanquish the villain in his own life whether it is the wealthier, more educated, more virtuous, more accomplished, more entitled, or one who is so unlike him but one whom he aspires to become.
Then there is the very elusive social justice in Filipino society that allows the long-existing social inequalities to persist. For how can there be peace and harmony when the guilty powerful and wealthy are not punished for their crimes but only the poor and vulnerable? How long has this situation been going on? Since we can remember! That Filipinos are unable to reject the politically un-performing dynasties lies at the root cause of this local dysfunction. Until the true voice of the poor and marginalized governed is effectively represented in the governing, there can be no social justice. This is the paradox of the Filipino nation. The political dynasties are in it for themselves more than the common good. They have scapegoated any public discontent of their own making to their political enemies, including state enemies, to stay in power. They have created entire dependencies which double as the bases of their votes. They have fed upon the long-standing Filipino cultures of patronage, dualism, ambiguity, mediocrity, and even corruption to remain in power for as long as they possibly can. In this situation, there is no room for the common good. Only a firm institution of justice can restore a check and balance to this stranglehold, level the playing field, and therefore allow governance to work for the common good. The Filipino nation’s inability to institute an effective criminal justice system has miserably failed the Filipino people. It has rewarded the criminals and convicted the helpless innocents. It has sustained the generally culpable political dynasties which treat the nation as their fiefdoms, milking it at the expense of the common good. Individual Filipinos, only happy with scraps from their masters and totally clueless about anything else wider in scope, have enabled their own injustices and helped convict their nation to anything but a land where the common good thrives.
What then has the Filipino’s innate problem with the common good and lack of social justice led to? They have led to the Filipino’s creation of his own myopic world of justice and good. Since the Filipino has seen a system of justice that punishes the poor guilty but lets the rich guilty go scot-free, the Filipino has learned to either be on the side of the powerful, wayward or not, or create his own justice. Since the Pinoy has seen the undeserving rewarded but not the deserving, he has learned to create his own rewards even within a dysfunctional system of corruption and disregard of meritocracy. Standards of public policy and genuine recognition have suffered because these standards have been lowered to accommodate the undeserving. Lies euphemistically labeled alternative realities are now shoved down the throats of the governed giving them all the more reason to likewise create their own alternative worlds to suit their own sanity. The wayward may deserve their undeserved titles of congressman (?), senator (?), general (?), Vice-president (?), president (?), but certainly not the governed who deserve so much better and are the true power in the government structure. The Filipino who contributes to the frustration of the common good, distortion of the sovereign will, and the creation of concocted realities away from the true state of the nation is definitely not worth dying for. But the Republic of the Philippines certainly is.
