Corrupted value system

Echoes From

BY  Johnny Dayang

After six months of closure to visitors, to facilitate its rehabilitation, Boracay is now back to its pristine state and attractiveness that have won for it the title “Island Paradise in the Pacific.”

Its mesmerizingly inviting bluish seawater offshore, powdery white sand that never gets hot even during blistering summer days, and exhilarating landscape are now there again for all to see and enjoy. On the first day of its trial opening run, however, somebody dumped thrash while others left their discarded plastic garbage littering its beach.

This behavioral aberration simply reflects our mindless and utter lack of discipline which now seems deeply ingrained in our seriously corrupted culture and value system. This in turn finds shameless manifestation in our corrupted political culture and practices.

For decades now, we have repeatedly elected many corrupt, dishonest, incompetent and intellectually mediocre politicians to public offices. This repeatedly happens because many among our voters have been so corrupted to the point that they even offer their votes for sale to aspiring political candidates.

Loose talks have it that vote buying rates now go as high as P5,000 per vote or even higher. This partly explains the proliferation of political dynasties both in the local and national level. Even our party-list system, originally designed to ensure the representation of marginalized sectors in the legislature, is now getting dominated by traditional politicians.

Previously, a wealthy party-list congressman represented the sector of security guards in Congress. The lawmaker of course is not a security guard. He in fact maintained an army of security guards since he belongs to a wealthy and powerful family.

We are also aware of the recent scandal at the Manila International Airport where a party-list congressman, supposedly representing overseas Filipino workers (OFW) brandished his NAIA security pass and shamelessly humiliated a security guard who asked him to remove his shoes in accordance with standard airport security rules. It turned out the party-list lawmaker is not an OFW but one who makes money out of OFWs since he reportedly owns a recruitment agency.

COMELEC records show over 100 party-list groups have filed their CONAs and COCs of their candidates for next year’s elections. It’s high time our principled and responsible lawmakers review and rewrite our party-list law to make it strictly adhere to the genuine intent of the constitutional provision related to it.