GMA should not step down

I am not in favor of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s stepping down voluntarily by resignation unless Washington, D.C. through a new Paul Laxalt calls and tells her to cut and cut cleanly.

I am in favor of the military and the police protecting her for like most Congressmen and local officials, they have enjoyed the perks and privileges not enjoyed by others before them. They should return the favor.

But I am not also stopping people from demanding her to resign. We need this constant and consistent reminder to make her act in arriving at the truth. I believe she can still turn it around by 2010 that will endear her to the people.

I believe Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is not the problem. She is the product and can be called the victim of that problem.

To solve it we must attack the problem, not its product. I don’t believe she is evil. She only has weak moorings on moral matters, evidenced by her failure to stop corruption.

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The problem we are solving is corruption. But Fidel V. Ramos said it better: greed, apathy, and corruption. Corruption is the product of greed and apathy. So we must attack greed and apathy along with corruption.

This is a very complicated process, because we are facing a complicated problem. And we can’t do it overnight.

And our people must not just center their attack on Malacañang and other national offices. We have a bigger problem of corruption in the provinces that seeps down to the barangays.

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Drive Arroyo out? We have our costly lessons. We drove Ferdinand Marcos out because of corruption. Then we kept quiet and loosened our guard. Because of greed and apathy, corruption was back with a vengeance.

Then the problem became bigger under Joseph Estrada. We drove him out and even threw him into jail. It became much worse.

Drive Gloria out? And probably jail her. But because the problem is not solved, greed, apathy, and corruption, the problem will become worst.

Most likely we will be driving out the next President and the next and the next and put them in jail. The problem becomes bigger.

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Let wisdom rule over worry, reason over rage, and discernment over debates. Let sobriety reign.

Greed, apathy, and corruption is not just around us. It is within us. It has dominated our flawed culture. It has devaluated our value system. In a sense it has destroyed us.

It is not just systematic. It is systemic or the attack is in the inner self. The attack is in our internal organs, society’s circulatory system and its lungs. It is like cancer that metastasizes.

We need to work harder. Society must not just ignore but ostracize the corrupt, show them you don’t like them. They are the enemy of the people stealing our money.

Be a whistleblower like Lozada and in the forefront of filing criminal cases against them. We are lucky here we have Bishop Vicente Navarra and other religious leaders who are leading the fight.

Fighting greed, apathy, and corruption requires many forms. But among the basic is a retooling of the procedures and policies in promoting transparency and accountability. Officials deeply enmeshed in corruption must be targeted.

Let us have a new set of lawmakers, untainted, unsoiled, and not reached by the long and dirty tentacles of corruption. They will craft a set of laws that will effectively and speedily punish wrongdoers and reward the good ones.

Our legal processes are defective for purposes of solving corruption. A grafter can run rings around the law and get away with it. Look at Imelda Marcos, 22 years after she is still scot free because she can afford to hire good lawyers and bribe people.

Corruption is not the work of the devil. It is the product of greed and apathy.

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Those corrupt must wake up from the comforts gained by their perks and privileges. Things will catch up with them sooner or later, considering the temper of the people and of the times.

Meanwhile, in Bacolod we can only beseech our religious leaders of different denominations led by Bishop Vicente Navarra to lead us in the struggle, long and weary though it may be.

In yesterday’s Gospel, as the Light of the World, Christ made a blind man see. Let Him open our eyes to the evil of corruption.

Let me dedicate to all our religious leaders a song from the poem of Anglican who later became a well-known Catholic Theologian John Henry Newman:

“Lead kindly light amidst the encircling gloom. Lead thou us on./ The night is dark and we are from home,/ Lead thou us on…”

Yes, for the country the night is getting dark and deep, dark and deep. There must be the Light, before we go to sleep.*

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