Sunday, May 11, 2008 Mercado: The poverty of greed By Juan L. Mercado Sidebar
“NEWSPAPERS report about exemplary Filipinos in the inside pages,” our Norwegian guest noted. Does that balance the greed in the headlines? After all, “greed is insatiable,” the Chinese say.
Indeed, in the $330 million ZTE broadband scandal, kickbacks were jacked up from the usual 20 percent to more than 60 percent. Joseph Estrada masqueraded as Jose Velarde, the courts found. And the P3.32 billion, stashed into the notorious Jose Velarde account, was siphoned after Erap was convicted for plunder.
“A greedy father will have thieves for children,” Serbian farmers say. Avarice on the national level is cloned by locals.
Catholic leaders in Surigao denounced scalping of remaining forests in Bislig despite a Supreme Court decision against Picop. And the Ombudsman found that Lapu-Lapu Mayor Arturo Radaza and officials overpriced, by six to seven times, street lamps they bought for the Asean summit.
A Mactan Island Chamber of Commerce and Industry survey reveals that 25 of 28 respondents were fleeced by City Hall grafters for permits and clearances. So, did President Arroyo approve Radaza’s P10 billion Mactan North Reclamation project, sleaze notwithstanding? That slap Gov. Gwen Garcia, Neda and other by-passed agencies.
Korean Lee Dong Bum and wife Kim Sun were threatened, then bundled into a car and hustled to Manila by agents Bernard Cruzata and Eduardo Silverio. There, a red-faced Commissioner Marcelino Libanan released them after finding the couple had permits to stay until 2009.
The new Regional 7 Immigration Commissioner Reynaldo Almaden pledges reforms. He will have his hands full.
“The Koreans are not an isolated case,” our Norwegian friend added. “That happens every day. To keep grafters at arm’s length, I don’t go to Immigration. I fly to Hong Kong and have the consulate there process my papers.”
For many, cash now is the end-all-and-be all. From a position for service, public office morphs into a tool for conserving perks. Thus, the lives of a Jose Diokno, who battled for a nation of integrity, or Good Shepherd nun Christine Tan, who served Malate’s poor, turn into "aberrations." They’re ignored for hewing to “values that endure even after the sun goes out.”
“Avarice is always poor,” Samuel Johnson wrote. You see that in the greedy seeking larger locks, hiring more security guards, raising more already high walls of gated enclaves. Many withdraw from contact with the needy. This jettisons the privilege to ease pain---which keeps all of us human. The Ilokano saying puts it very well: “Greed is a tree that grows on arid souls.”
“There is a widespread purposelessness,” Catholic University president William Byron observed. “To have becomes more important than to be. To possess is better than to share. To do for self takes precedence over doing for others. And things, rather than values, shape our decisions…We stress the material side of our existence and exclude the spiritual.”
The 1987 Constitution – which every other man in this jaded town wants to keel haul--–declares: “The use of property bears a social function.” In street jargon, that means the goods of this earth, from scarce rice, water, land to talents, are meant for all. “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions,” the Master said.
Far too many in public office shred that constitutional yardstick. But hundreds of ordinary citizens out there quietly share with the deprived. They give of their time, funds, skills and time. They are, as G.K. Chesterton once said, “wandering fires” who somehow “balance the greed that headlines scream about.”
