I don’t know how true the collective noun is, but a gathering of baboons is supposedly called a congress. That or whatever, I’ve no complaints. I know myself as an easy-going and willing kind of guy who would rather not rock the boat and instead accept anything. They be apes, chimps, orangutans, or gorillas, our distant cousins, they say. I’ve no fights with any of them.
But tagging their social grouping and calling it a congress? Not only does that hit closer to home, it’s grossly unfair… to them. They’ve done nothing to be put in the same category as some of our own collection of lying and thieving representatives and senators.
As my son and I parked one morning at McDonald’s Mintal he casually asked how come the roadway, every time we drive by, noticeably appears to be slowly disintegrating with each day.
That’s the thing, anak, I began. Let’s just suppose we have a hypothetical budget of P10 million allocated for a length of road somewhere. Recent as well as past investigations show, if you deduct from the total of that money already-apportioned percentages for some local politicians, several officials of the government agency involved, the contractor etc., all that remains of the original budget is what will be used for the actual construction.
Then, in order to cope with that depleted budget, the only way now is to use cheaper or sub-standard materials. Sadly, the usual excuses of floods and rains as the main causes of disrepair that we see may be partly true, but the real cause can be traced to the downgraded quality of the project, with its cut budget. That’s corruption for you.
It’s not like that new space rock hurtling toward our planet. On the contrary, in our country, it must have made landfall a long time ago. My generation’s first brush with corruption, I’m guessing, must have come during the first edition of Marcos, with propaganda on media already hitting hard and exposing a dirty spot here and there. Tagalog komiks, for instance, were only too eager to highlight illegal practices and portray dirty politicians. Not a direct exposure, but just enough to make a rough sketch.
However, we fail to recognize that little versions of it exist in our day-to-day. Gaining favors, for one, which is built-in into our psyche, is a lesser 0.1 version. Others, you have to see for yourself, using only the criteria of 1.) Is it rightful, and 2.) Does it only benefit you?
On the way home, I spotted a long line of tricycles and other smaller public transports parked by the side of the road leading up to our subdivision, with their drivers watching intently what’s up ahead. As though on cue, I looked down at my phone on my lap to read an FB shoutout: warning – checkpoint in Uraya.
So many things to glean from this. For one, those drivers by the road, I’m willing to bet, must either be lacking their licenses or official certificates of registration, and they’re waiting for the cops to leave.
Clearly lawbreakers these are, kolorum, in local-speak. The FB warning also indicates, not only is this type of lawbreaking tolerated, but there’s already a system to it. Now, going back to our cries of putting an end to corruption in government, I know our little 0.1 isn’t up to the level of those billion-peso burglars, but where do you think they started from?
