Not a day goes by without the latest news reported by “journalists” or opinion pieces issued by the Philippines’ “thought leaders” on the on-going corruption “issue” (more like the latest outrage fad) gripping the nation sailing up our screens. Most people simply scroll past these headlines according them no more than an occasional eye-roll. Names being quoted are just finds-and-replaces on tired content templates for “reports” on “wars on corruption” that go back decades. Backdropped against these corruption “scandals” are sad laments on how the Philippines continues to lag behind not just its original southeast Asian peers but also those that had only recently emerged from war and communist malaise.
Why is the Philippines so irrevocably corrupt? That is the bigger question here. It seems Philippine society is an inherently dishonest one. We explored this confronting hypothesis quite a few times and, more recently, in the post “There’s no need to ‘normalise’ dishonesty in the Philippines because dishonesty is already NORMAL there”.
Indeed, one thing that the Philippines isn’t is a truthful society. This is quite evident in the way Filipinos simply do not trust one another. Because they do not trust one another, they break their own laws as a matter of routine — because they do not trust their lawmakers and law enforcers to act in the general public’s best interests.
A Filipino’s word, therefore, is the most overrated notion. It is of very little value. This is why the top political blogger of the Opposition, for example, is known as the “Resibo Queen”. In the vernacular, resibo, is a screenshot included in, say, a blog post to prove one is not lying.
And, as such…
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It is therefore not surprising that Filipino politicians are perceived to be generally dishonest. Because, after all, in a democracy, leaders mirror the character of the popular vote.
In practical terms, expecting Filipino leaders, bureaucrats, and administrators to mount even a reasonably pretentious effort to “fight corruption” and institute “reform” remains a quaint national fantasy. After all, one needs honourable leaders to sustain such commitment to change. Unfortunately for Filipinos, honour is not a strong part of Filipino tradition…
Because Filipinos cannot be trusted to be honourable enough to do the right thing on their own volition. And so whereas a standard process will require, say, one approval and one validation, those Filipinos are subject to in their country require double or even triple that. It is easy to see this dynamic at work in one’s routine commute to and from work. There are steel and concrete barriers littered all over Manila’s roads that are meant to physically control traffic flow. Compare this to other cities in the world where mere concepts painted on the road largely suffice.
A “corrupt-free” Philippines is a mere concept — one that has no observable counterpart in the real world, and none seen to be emerging in the foreseeable future. Already, pundits are calling out what is likely to be the same result coming out of the banal sameness of this on-going investigation into massively-failed flood control projects as the Inquirer Editor himself writes today.
The namby-pamby quality of justice and liability meted out in this country when it comes to the powerful and well-connected informs the public’s continuing anger and anxiety over the ongoing flood control investigation. Not only is the probe seemingly moving at a glacial pace, with the President’s much-ballyhooed Independent Commission for Infrastructure defanged and down to its last months, but the trajectory also appears to hew to the disgraceful outcome of the pork barrel scam: In the end, only the small fry will be punished as scapegoats, while the true masterminds of the sweeping criminal racket that stole billions of the people’s money right inside the halls and corridors of government will once again get away.
It may by now be a sad cliché but these classic quotables from the venerable Albert Einstein remains, even more sadly, a relevant reality for the 120+ million strong lot of hapless Filipinos: We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them and, as such, the eminent physicist was said to have said; insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
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There’s several underlying factors, not necessarily in order:
1. A culture built upon indirect communication and reliance on nonverbal cues and “parinig” discourages being straightforward
2. Emotional immaturity: the inability to say no and take no for an answer (although from my experience it occurs on different categories of Filipinos). Some become pushovers who are unable to set boundaries while others learn to become disrespectful and dishonest because they’ve been taught to not accept rejection as an answer.
3. The religious culture encouraging impunity and lack of authenticity: I can be a horrible person 6 days of the week because God would just forgive me on Sunday, right? Extend this logic to Filipinos being conditioned to act like it’s okay to steal and cheat others.
4. Dysfunctional family networks resulting in one or two hardworking family members being exploited by their relatives, especially prevalent among OFWs.
5. Anti-intellectualism and anti-work ethic; not to say that high IQ people are incapable of corruption or vice versa, but Filipino work culture rewarding nepotism and social connections over competence and integrity inevitably leads to people in power stealing billions from the masses’ taxpayer money because they happen to know the right people or impress their bosses. Someone like Lee Kuan-Yew would never climb up the political ranks in this country because he’s simply too honest to be offered with bribes.
All of the above on point. Notice that many of these traits involve values formed from within the family unit. This points to the profound nature of the Pinoy dysfunction — that it emanates from the very fibres woven into the fabric of Philippine society.
The laughable nature of Filipino politics is no more than a mere symptom of this profound rot.
If you’re familiar with concepts such as learned helplessness, parentification, enmeshment, codependent relationships, emotional incest, etc., these problems run rife among many Filipino families. Then these tendencies in turn give rise to or correlate with the other behaviors I mentioned in my previous comment.
All of these problems can really boil down into 2 causes: fatalism and lack of rugged individualism. When an entire people have been conditioned that they are powerless to change their situation and control their life—or that there’s no possibility of their circumstances becoming better, honesty and integrity go out of the window.
How else would such a highly religious country also end up having such degrees of dysfunction and moral rot? Filipinos don’t attend church or celebrate fiestas because it’s the right thing to do or in order to become a better person, but rather (1) as a coping mechanism that they’ll have the assurance of bliss in the next life free of misery, and (2) using religion as a spiritual means of dodging accountability and enabling impunity (“God will just forgive me”)
This is probably the reason why oligarchs and dynasties are so entrenched in Philippine society — because these are figures and institutions Filipinos use as crutches to keep themselves functioning while beset with the collective psychological illnesses you mentioned.
No surprise then that “freedom” was never really the silver bullet it was thought, back in 1986, that would cure Filipinos’ chronic impoverishment. All it did was lay bare and make even more stark these root problems.
Life for the average working-class Filipino in February 1986 was no different as it is 40 years hence. The only people in this country who thought they were losing “freedom” were the Communists and the opposition oligarchs. And it’s no wonder that the EDSA “revolution” didn’t become the panacea to this country’s systemic dysfunction—because it was never intended to be by those who instigated it. And this exposes the disconnect of the woke “thought leaders” in the academe from the deep-rooted cultural rot of the masses. The very proletariat class itself is guilty of the very same greed, dishonesty and lack of empathy that the political dynasties exhibit.
I suppose that even an enlightened dictatorship a là Lee Kuan-Yew would still fail to heal Filipino society. One might as well ban the Church and fiestas altogether, forbid useless family members from asking money from their relatives and put an end to the likes of Showtime that only put more brainrot on the screen.
What aware Pinoys can do at most is to stop patronizing the clergy, boycott elections, cut off family members and move away to a more peaceful location, and teach their children to live simply and reject all forms of materialism and vices. One can accomplish a lot more that way than by joining the NPA to end up blown by the Army’s artillery.
Why does our leadership attract the corrupt? The structure basically reinforces corruption and incompetence by rewarding obedience and eliminating those who dare to act with integrity. You don’t survive inside it without getting yourself corrupted or by shutting your eyes close the whole time.
The source and height of corruption is thinking that the world owes you, when nothing really belongs to you. You belong to this planet. It has the right to refuse you.