Dig the base of the iceberg

First Week, August

“Everybody is searching for a hero,” so the lyrics of a popular song goes. Well, not everybody is searching for a hero now. In fact, nobody needs a hero right now. Nor do we need to search for one. What we need today is truth and whether we seek or stumble upon it would not matter. We need it even if we do not want it.

The P10 billion pork barrel scam is only one of the many anomalies committed in the name of local development. Others remain plain rumors unto this day—they gave rise to no headline or investigation. Billions of money had been lost yet nobody seems alarmed. Our attitudes to such waste, if not plain robbery, is a business as usual type. The phenomenon seems common place and as such, we have become immune to it.

If there is anything worth investigating in the Philippines, it is this. Public moneys have been squandered in billions since the first Edsa Revolt in 1986. No President had able to put a stop into it. Every past President seems complicit in this waste of public money, one way or the other. And thus, everyone seems unworthy of calling for a truth commission that will unearth all evidence of misuse of public funds.

            How much people’s money got wasted by sheer mismanagement of national and local officials? How much people’s money was plundered by elective and appointive officials? These questions seek answer and the answer that they are demanding should take into consideration all past and present government administration.

Fact is that public funds are wasted. Whether such waste happened by corruption or simple mismanagement is inconsequential. We need to know how much got lost and who are responsible for them. Once we now the truth— its complete version of course—we should then resolve to exact accountability and responsibility from those who stole or mismanage them.

Investigate the loss of public funds from 1986 to the present and render full accounting to the Filipino people. This should be the first order of the day to institute administrative and financial reforms in the government. Unless we do this, all our efforts would mean nothing; they would just be like scratching the tip of the iceberg. We need to dig deep towards the base of the iceberg. This sounds revolutionary but the situation demands it. Only a revolutionary action can meet the enormous task needed to change the grave economic, political and social ills afflicting our country. Any initiative short of such drastic action will only be futile for our problems require more than the institution of superficial reforms.