The Worst Kind of Corruption

Dec. 22, 2011 Philippine Daily Inquirer Letter to the Editors Dear Sirs: The Worst Kind of Corruption Corruption in our country is not only endemic; it is pandemic. It is like a supernatural monster existing here, there, and everywhere. It is always hungry and needs feeding. The diet is unique: sacred lies marinated in holy deception then cooked with the power of education The worst kind of corruption, however, is the corruption of the mind and heart. The evil comes from our corrupt system of education. Look at the corrupt men and corrupt women in and out of government. They are the corrupt products of La Salle, Ateneo, Assumption, Letran, San Beda, Miriam college, University of Santo Thomas, University of the Philippines, Asian Institute of Management and all the rest of them that are commercial enterprises, hardly educational. Indeed, we are all born innocent, not corrupt. We are made corrupt during our formative years in school to believe in a lot of illusions and delusions that keep our society perpetually sick under national confusion. Indeed, we are not the rich masters of education. We are the poor victims of it. It is time that we Filipinos look seriously at our corrupt values and beliefs. Corruption has given us an image not of life, but of death. Ours, indeed, is a culture of corruption. A half-naked dead Son of God hangs on a cross in most of our homes, schools, hospitals, banks, sports arena, courts of Law, executive, legislative, judicial branches of government office, and indeed, especially around our own necks. It is not a symbol of self-respect as a people. It is not symbol of dignity as a nation. It is, indeed, a symbol of our failure as a people under the success of superstition in our poor and backward country. One of the greatest man this world has ever produced was a Filipino - our one and only Jose Rizal. He wrote two great books that shook the foundation of Christian power and authority over our minds and hearts as a conquered people. He proved with documentary evidence that we are not the brightened masters, but the frightened victims of Christianity. He was publicly executed in December 30, 1896 as authorized by his enemy. The enemy that never left the Philippines. She is still here with power, wealth, and glory popularly known as our "faith in God." Jesus, the Founder of Christianity, warned his disciples and followers: "If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethern, and yea, his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26 Our Jose Rizal, always on the side of humanity, wrote: "The whole thought of my whole life has always been love of my country and her moral and material development." To Filipinos, he wrote in a manifesto: "My dream was my country's prosperity. . . I would like the Filipino to become worthy, noble, honorable, for a people who makes itself despicable for its cowardice or vices exposes itself to abuses and vexations." In the meantime, we Filipinos have yet to recognize why and how other foreign countries have also been substantiating Rizal's stand on the beauty of science and the power of technology. So much so that these foreign countries have been growing and developing. They are able to hire Filipinos to be their workers and laborers. Now estimated at 15 million Filipinos today residing and working in some 198 countries around the world. Such foreign countries have the free will to establish for themselves a higher standard of living and thinking. The life we conceive as a people is the life we achieve as a nation. With the birth of Jose Rizal in my mind and his death anniversary in my heart, I celebrate dearly what I envisage yearly - the Filipino capacity for love, beauty, knowledge, and the joys in life. Indeed, I celebrate the Filipino potential in creating social sanity, political integrity, religious rationality, economic prosperity, and historical sensibility. The struggle against corruption is everyone's business. Everyone is affected by it, therefore everyone should be responsible enough to take a genuine interest in efforts to admit it, confront it, and to eradicate it. We might begin to admit that the lies and deceptions making for our sick society are not constructive invocations but have been and still are utterly destructive revelations. Sincerely, Poch Suzara San Lorenzo Village, Makati city