Inside the Philippines

an essay by Roger B Rueda

In the Philippines, honesty and integrity are only part of propaganda, but the truth is the ones telling of honesty and integrity are those who are lacking in them. The ones who hate the corrupt are those who have consummate corruption. The ones who disdain evils have archevils clad in angelic outfits close to them, manoeuvring them, waiting for their collapse – or they are evils themselves, unknowing that they are. The ones who help the poor are the ones whose family and kinfolk made millions to be poor or took selfish or unfair advantage of the poor to be poorer or down-and-out. Everyone now has their own inner conflict to keep cover, to survive socially, commercially, and politically. Everyone now especially the politicians has become more psychologically precocious and image-conscious behind all their malevolence and voracity. It’s time everyone became more prudent, or else they would be played away.

The national government is pushing for a corrupt-free government, yet the local ones have fraudulence and characteristic of their own. They are the paradox of what is campaigned for. They have agendas of their own. This happens because such a campaign is only made known in words and not operationally and seriously, without all the monitoring and setting up of feedback mechanisms that will provide useful information for future decisions and development of the government. Without this, all the campaigns on anti-corruption are only artificiality. It means it has no sincerity or spontaneity in here. They are all apparently vague and general, only high-flown rhetoric, only hoopla. Acting against corrupt officials only happens when the corrupt government officials are anti-national government, when they are put on the agenda.

Fortunately, anyway, no one is complaining to this point, but history will or after 2016, when everyone has realised the untruthfulness, pretence, and worst treachery of the previous government, whose agendas would have been unimaginable and whose paradoxes would have been two-faced and impertinent.

Another thing, not all local counterparts of the government are good and truthful. Most of them were evils arrayed in pretentious outfits of an angel, their hearts so malicious and avaricious. These local government officials protect anyone who has money despite his/her shameful, unwise, or regrettable act or activity that involves breaking the law. Money in the local level of government talks much and mightily and everyone listens to it, according to a local writer on my Facebook. Surprisingly, the national government is unspeaking about all these. This is a simple failure of sincerity and urgency, to stop all corruption in the government. Well, it is easy to believe this rhetoric when everything is OK, but when a lot in this country are hurtled down to injustice, mishandling, and disproportion – and unthinkable reality, such pomposity becomes exposed and discerned, like what is coming about now, slowly, increasingly – and the tall tale is coming into view like the tip of the iceberg.

The laws of the Philippines are also pretentious and hollow. It is perhaps for this country to be seen in a positive light globally. Imagine millions of workers receive pays below the minimum and whose benefits are deprived of them, yet the government turns its back on this issue and talks like everything is OK in this country before the international media and journalists and foreign legates. What is more substantial and central here – the law, the country’s image globally, the skint workers, who have no voice to express their unhappiness, or the well-fixed employers who grease the palms of the local politicians? Why does the government allow this abuse and violation to happen, reflecting its disrespect for the laws? If the laws are not followed, then why not repeal them – or at least amend them?

This government talks about its achievements, yet in truth, millions of Filipinos are putting up with inequality and injustice in all sectors of the government – as corruption is done in subtlety and with utter expertise, as a lot of poor people are exploited yet disregarded by the DOLE itself. Without addressing this problem, it points towards how unconcerned and lethargic the government is. It reflects how habitually careless or irresponsible the DOLE is. It reflects, too, how defenceless it is from moneyed employers and businessmen, which calls for the government to streamline its policies and ways to be more of help. Imagine this: the DOLE allows the erring employers to manage the distribution of back pays to their workers without its presence. Yes, workers can complain anytime, the DOLE would put in plain words – and the workers sign here. Really? Why can’t the DOLE act on this issue so that distrust and suspicion are avoided? Or does the DOLE itself want to get out of this to help employers do the chicanery lawfully deceptively? Isn’t it so obvious? Only the stupid can’t notice this. What has a representative/senator done about it? Is it OK, anyway? For me, it’s a favour to give latitude for the employers to defraud workers with authorisation. And I’m sure this is one of those good turns extended on the sly by the government to the most moneyed and influential.

I can say then that the laws of the Philippines are not for the welfare of everyone, but for the image the government has outside this country. To say at least that there is no injustice or abuse here because everything undergoes a process. Yet to the mind of the victims, they have become more helpless and adversely ill-treated – not only by their untruthful employers but by the inattentive and dissembling government. Some of them will just keep it in their heart, but to some, they will scatter it, like the scattering of seeds over the fields, over their family and friends, over the next generation. A lot of people know it and all government officials should inspire shame in themselves, because it is not that the people do not know it, they only keep mum to the level nobody knows – until, of course, the flare-up, like those made by militant and radical groups, until everyone is ready and resolute to pressure the government or worst to vanquish the oligarchy, the system favourable to the elite or toffs.

It is funny though that still a lot of our politicians and government officials pretending to be angelic hope to be recognised as an angel and a hero in the end despite the blatancy of their ill will and duplicity. Is it because they think all Filipinos are so thick or dispassionate? Well let’s see in 2016 who the PCOS is programmed to vote for. Let’s see if PR and PCOS are still the best towards a corrupt-free Philippines! And let’s see if PR can still romanticise the incompetence and failure and unfulfilled promises of the present government and the uncontrollability and leaning-on of the local government as all these go down in everyone’s consciousness and in history.