by Edcer Escudero
Presidential hopeful Benigno Aquino hopes to win the election on the issue of corruption. He has made it his battlecry. He presents himself as the ultimate or ideal antithesis of corruption. He theorizes that there is no poverty if there is no corruption.
Aquino, however, does not tell us how he will stop corruption beyond saying that he is not corrupt.
Now, how do we solve a problem like corruption?
Before we hazard a solution, let us accept the fact that corruption is as old as civilization itself. No nation on earth—democratic or otherwise—is corruption-free.
Is there a sure way of stopping corruption? It won’t be easy, but there is a sure way – one hundred percent sure. You will know it after we have a brief glimpse of history.
In 1986, we ejected from the seat of political power the man who many believed was the supreme architect of corruption in our country. With him out of power, we nurtured high hopes that corruption would be a thing of the past.
But alas! It didn’t. In fact, it became a bigger thing, and gave us reason to worry about the future.
For a dozen successive years a housewife and a military man ruled our country. They fought corruption – or so we thought – but somehow they failed to crush it.
Then, in 1998, a pretentious crusader acting like a knight in shining armor, showed up and declared war on corruption. But because he was a pretender and a fake crusader, corruption easily knocked him out. The graft court found him guilty of corruption and sentenced him to a lifetime prison term. But Lady Luck smiled at him. President Gloria fast-tracked a presidential pardon that sent him back to his home in San Juan, Rizal, a free man. The convicted plunderer never wore the orange of a prisoner. How lucky can one get?
How widespread is corruption in our country? Well, it’s all over the land. There is corruption in the government, in private companies, in social and civic organizations, in churches, everywhere.
All anti-Gloria forces say that Gloria is evil, and assert that if we get rid of Gloria, we get rid of corruption in government. It’s not that simple. Corruption has many faces, but Gloria’s detractors see only one face – hers. We don’t stop corruption by stopping one person.
If there is wholesale corruption, there should be wholesale solution.
Now, here’s that 100 percent sure way I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. Let there be non-stop rain for 40 days and 40 nights all over the land. That will wipe out all the corrupt people in this country.
What about those who are not corrupt? Well, let them build an ark and stay, they may just watch the rain fall and chant “rain, rain go away, come again another day…”
But then, the rain didn’t go away. And they all drowned noisily ever after.
