It’s been the rising refrain of some friends in media, academia and the coffeeshop crowd – mostly somewhat to my left – to insist (and, I believe, reasonably so) that there is nothing fundamentally different between BBM and Sara, between the families and factions of the ruling class they represent, and between their lust for power and money. Therefore, the correct call to the people in this situation, regardless of the consequences, can only be ‘Down with both of them! BBM and Sara, resign!’ Those Latinate lawyers had a term for it: ‘fiat justitia, ruat caelum’ – let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.
For the plotters of a recently rumored coup, the heavens falling would have meant the replacement of both Marcos and Duterte with a 30-person junta that would include, as juntas go, retired military generals, civilian leaders and a couple of clergymen. (What, no writers and artists? Thumbs down!) That plot was dead even before it got off the ground, and perhaps thankfully so – a 30-person junta already sounds worse than a 24-person Senate, and something in me resists the idea of having Catholic priests (or Protestant pastors or Muslim imams, etc.) in any kind of executive capacity in government.
Yes, the people are marching in the streets and are in the mood for the public execution of their plunderers. Our trust and confidence in our leaders have been so badly abused and misplaced that we are now drowning in cynicism and disbelief, certain only in the fact that we are being stolen from by someone, somewhere, somehow.
Nevertheless I sense no great appetite for a revolutionary regime change that will only unsettle things even more. If anything, what we want is certainty and predictability – that the law will be applied and take its course, that the wrongdoers will be identified, prosecuted and punished, and that proper and ample restitution will be made for their crimes, so that we can all move along as a reasonably functioning society.
Not to say that everything will be just peachy once the robber-contractors and their patrons are exposed and put in chains, but that the alert will have been sounded, the people awakened and the bar raised much higher for aspirants to public office in 2028 and beyond. The progressives and middle forces couldn’t have been handed a greater gift: corruption has to be the top election issue, because it affects the poor more visibly now than any other, especially those who can’t escape the floodwaters while their congressman jets off to France.
It’s a problem and a crisis big enough for another EDSA (not to mention all the coup attempts that followed EDSA), but the first EDSA taught us that a sudden change of people at the top, no matter how good the replacements are, doesn’t guarantee deep and lasting change; it merely opens the door for a new set of crooks to come in, and for some old ones to return. EDSA 1 wasn’t a waste; aside from the relief it brought, it was a lesson we needed badly to learn. But have we?
Until our electorate learns to recognize and to vote for its own best interests, no amount of EDSAs short of the bloody revolution and the mass guillotining we’re all trying to avoid will change the composition of the Congress, the Senate and the executives they work with. The current crisis is the best and also the most painful teaching point to have come along to show Filipinos who and what exactly they’ve been voting for, and who’s been paying for all those dole-outs come Election Day – no other than themselves, from the money that should have been spent on keeping them alive and well. Vote for the corrupt, and you kill yourself and your family. You are being bribed today to be stolen from tomorrow.
The challenge now is to get that message through, make it stick and not allow it to be muddled by clever counter-propaganda and by possibly well-meant but adventurous calls for regime change.
Coup or resignation, neither nor both of these will happen. The coup was stillborn and could have led to worse. If the Marcoses and Dutertes are as thick-skinned as their critics make them out to be, then they will brazen it out, ruat caelum.
The way forward can be lit up by the facts that will emerge out of the many parallel investigations now taking place into the infrastructure scam and wheresoever it may lead – not just at the Independent Commission for Infrastructure, but also in the even more independent media.
The enemies of the truth know how easy it is not just to distort the truth, but to destroy the truth-sayers. They did it to Leila de Lima with the sordid exposé of a private relationship that, even if it were true, was her own business. They put NBN-ZTE whistleblower Jun Lozada behind bars.
Unlike many others, I am willing to let the albeit imperfectly constituted ICI do its work – but quickly and transparently, please – and to judge it by its results. We can expect that no one facing the ICI will come clean with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We will be dealing instead with a complex puzzle, putting it together piece by irregular piece until the broad and inescapable picture of systemic corruption emerges, with every part and element detailed – from delivery boys and drivers to district engineers to Cabinet-level officials to congressmen, senators and ultimately to the highest offices of the land.
The Vice President is already involved – it was the corruption in her office, after all, that led to her impeachment in Congress. Inevitably this circuit of corruption will come around to the Office of the President and to its signing power over whatever budget proposal it receives and presumably reviews; the only question will be that of BBM’s personal culpability and what of it, if any, can be proven.
That could yet be the ultimate test of BBM himself, of our democracy and of whether, after all’s been said and done, it may be time for another regime change outside of the ballot box; fiat justitia, ruat caelum.