IN THE launch of the Amnesty International (AI) Report 2009 at the Ateneo de Davao University several days back, AI Section Director Dr. Aurora Parong wasn't so het up about coming out with human rights indices as indicators of how bad human rights violations have become in a country, specifically the Philippines. Indices are good indicators, she said, but do not reflect what is on the ground.

The Philippines for one has a face that can impress anyone who's looking into its policies. It has the best policies and the best laws.

Cebu inmates' tribute to Michael Jackson
For minute updates follow Sun.Star on Twitter

As Dr. Parong said, laws on human rights are in place. But there's an entirely different picture on the ground.

It's the same for corruption. In fact, it has been announced the other day that the deadline for compliance to the Anti-Red Tape Act for all government agencies and local government units is on September 4, this year.

The Act shortens the process of public services and forces government agencies and offices to "tidy up." It penalizes bureaucratic red tape and graft and corruption.

Then the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has come out with its guidelines for whistleblowers, which was published in a national daily last week. The policy is supposed to protect the whistleblower of an anomalous deal within DAR.

But all these will go the way of those signs inside National Government agencies that say, "No Fixers Allowed", as if by putting up the sign the fixers will willingly just sneak out.

The problem is not in the signs and the laws. It's in the morals of the people who see only their salaries and kickbacks from an employment that should have otherwise been called public service.

The problem is not in the signs and the laws but in the value given by each public servant to the work he renders the public not the resentment he breeds because his officemate is getting a bigger pot in the corruption pie.

The problem is not in the signs and the laws but on the temerity of drivers of government offices and officials to use sirens to bully their way past heavy traffic.

The problem is not in the signs and the laws but in the blind eye we give to every corrupt act we tolerate, like expecting someone to help us through some government office procedures because we know an insider.

The problem is not in the signs and the laws. It's in all of us, and the solution lies within us as well, when we finally, as one people will wait for our turn in every line there is, will follow every road signs and markers and rule and not look forward to having sirens and police escorts, will render the service expected of us whether as public servants, private employees, individual entrepreneurs, taxi and jeepney drivers, or farmers and fishers with respect for others and dignity for ourselves.

Indeed, indices help, but they don't paint the real picture on the ground. And in a country like the Philippines where anarchy rules even on the very street we walk on every day, the signs and the laws paint a very different picture from how we actually live our life and that is very sad. Can we expect the next generation to be better? Not for as long as what they're seeing is what we have been doing.