Lying and stealing
I come from a generation of Filipinos who grew up learning about Mother America as the paragon of good government and, conversely, about us Filipinos, being hopelessly corrupt, in both government and private transactions. More often, it was the government that was painted as the villain, preying on the private sector through extortion, kickbacks, and dozens of other fraudulent deals.
The exposés of corruption in the construction (and nonconstruction) of flood control projects, estimated to reach trillions of pesos, were so overwhelming, they sent Filipinos out to Luneta and other urban centers last Sunday, braving the rains (and, fortunately, no big floods) to protest and to call for justice.
Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon, who took office just this month, vowed to send the guilty to jail, freeze their assets, and recover the stolen money not just from the guilty officials but also from their children, who benefited from the plunder.
Quite ambitious goals, maybe, because we, for the moment at least, have been emboldened by events in neighboring Indonesia and Nepal, where there have also been massive protests against corruption, bringing down the Nepalese government.
What will it take to sustain anti-corruption movements without them degenerating into chaos and violence, which, paradoxically, often means the collapse of the government, only to be succeeded by new corruption?
A clue comes with a saying resurrected by Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto: “Ang sinungaling ay asawa ng magnanakaw,” which I’m literally, but awkwardly translating as, “Lying and stealing are spouses,” or bedfellows.
There is truth in the expression, which I’ve heard occasionally for many years and which has become more salient in our flood scandal-inundated times.
Sotto was referring to the accusations and allegations made by individuals who are being investigated for corruption. Paradoxically, it is the accused who are now offering additional accusations of lying and perjury, a weird variation on the palit-ulo (literally, change heads) tactics of Duterte’s war on drugs. In the palit-ulo scheme, the police look for people to replace the accused, who end up laying their heads on the chopping board while the real culprits are let free.
Two of the 10 Commandments: “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not bear false witness”–are used by Jews, Christians, and, in a modified form (without being numbered), Muslims.
In addition, Proverbs 26 from the Old Testament offers even more wisdom: “A lying tongue hates those it hurts and a flattering mouth works ruin,” elaborating further on the power of deception. The hurt that lying brings is always obvious, but less visible is the way lies, as flattery, create great, if not more, harm, and this is especially relevant when we speak of corruption.
Listen to the henchmen of corrupt contractors and politicians, with all their references to “boss” and their relationships often summarized as “inutusan ako (I was ordered).” The “bosses” would not be endorsing hundreds of millions of pesos in cash to these underlings if they had not proven their loyalty, if not adoration, to the boss. And the corruption of the bosses would not have become such hideous malignancies, spreading like cancers, if their loyal followers had not fed their politician bosses with flattery, aka deceptive praise. History offers all too many examples of how syndicate bosses, politicians, and religious cult leaders all share an addiction to praise, which eventually corrupts them and their organizations to the core.
Working together, lying, and stealing create the most amazing of delusions. I was watching one of the many documentaries that have appeared around school building projects, which are now being exposed even as the investigations of flood control projects continue. I was quite shaken by an aerial video showing one project that seems to have stopped after completion of one phase. Corruption, it seems, comes through many phases. The problem is that the completed phase covered only the foundation of the building, with nothing else for the hapless students and teachers to hope for.
But that is what is so terrifying about corrupt infrastructure projects. Whether dikes, school buildings or roads, the lying starts early in the project with the corruption of the word “completion” as contractors and politicians become “emperors,” displaying themselves naked at the inauguration as the crowds applaud the new clothes.
This is why those who lead movements for change have to be constantly reminded about who their real bosses should be, and for citizens to learn to be discerning about leaders, old and new.
Lying and stealing are indeed spouses, and their offspring are impunity and disaster.
