Wednesday, June 18, 2008 Carvajal: ‘Rape of the nation’ By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
THE Senate committee on agriculture and the Blue Ribbon committee describe it as “the rape of the nation,” referring to the P728 million fund to buy fertilizer and farm implements that was plundered instead by government officials and private individuals. The office of the Ombudsman has all the details of this scam but remarkably after four years the findings and recommendations are still to be acted on. (cf Aries Rufo, Philippine Star, June 15 issue).
Since this fund is just part of the P2.8 billion released to the Department of Agriculture, one cannot help but wonder how much this has to do with the scarcity and/or high price of rice and of fertilizer. One must also wonder where the money is coming from that the administration is using to dole out to the needy during these hard times.
This is how people get away with plunder, with raping the nation, the use of raw power by top officials to protect their partners in crime from prosecution and punishment. This is how useless investigations and probes are of anomalies perpetrated by those in power. Perhaps, somewhere in the middle of the power tangle is the solution to the Esperat murder. Esperat bucked the system and paid for it with her life but the masterminds in the Department of Agriculture have so far gotten away with murder literally.
Because of the futility of going against those in power, the nation is left at the mercy of the latter’s conscience. Unfortunately there has been hardly any evidence that people in power have grown a conscience at all. There has been no direct attack on poverty and no sincerely determined effort to eradicate official corruption. Instead there have only been dole-outs (before and during elections) while the shameless plunder of the country’s resources by its leaders continue with impunity.
But then how can we grow a conscience when the educational system that promotes the nation’s culture and ethos is one of the most corrupt? There is a shortage of everything, including toilets lately, and teachers are asking for contributions from their poor pupils because the budget for their needs have been spirited away by corrupt education officials.
If the fertilizer anomaly was the rape of the nation, the education anomaly is the statutory rape of the nation since these conscienceless individuals in our public education system have deprived minors of an elementary education that is meant to be the foundation for high school and college education that could be their main weapon against poverty.
Experience tells us that things are often not as they seem. Indeed things are not what they seem in the Philippines. The rape of the nation looks bad but it is actually worse than we would like to think and admit.
