Quentin Tarantino’s movie Inglourious Basterds is the fictional story of First Lieutenant Aldo Raine, who recruits a team of eight Jewish-American soldiers to parachute into France and pose as civilians before the Normandy landings in 1941. Their mission is to sow terror and havoc within the ranks of the Third Reich by savagely killing as many German servicemen as possible. Adopting a “take no prisoners” stance, they come to be known as “The Basterds,” their signature style of scalping their victims producing extreme fear. Then they’d leave one token soldier alive to spread the news of their atrocious deeds. But before he is let loose, Raine cuts a Nazi swastika on his forehead as a final touch, so that the survivor will forever be marked and identified as a Nazi even after the war. The plot leaves the viewer with unresolved feelings about the arguable heroism of Raine’s group. They accomplish their mission with a savagery that seems to be its own reward.
In our counterpart reality of “Ingloria’s Bastards,” many similarities can be drawn. But there is no uncertainty about how we will feel when the ending finally happens. Here we have a whole legion of public servants recruited and appointed by our reigning head that regularly scalps the people and the nation’s treasury, and then leaves a few survivors for photo ops.
Take the recent deluge by typhoon Ondoy, which has been described as equivalent to the biblical torrent that required the building of Noah’s ark. Here we watched helplessly as the “rain of terror” swallowed many, among them the heroes who sacrificed their own lives to save as many victims as their strength allowed. Even now, more than two weeks later, floodwater is still waist-deep in some parts of the metropolis. As the nation slowly tries to recover, we realize what an inept and disastrous calamity plan we have; what a mess the city’s underbelly has become; how the lack of urban planning and unscrupulous developers allowed the construction of houses on no-man’s zones; how fragile and dangerous the dams and waterways are!
More related questions cropped up as the flood-ravaged capital began to realize the whys and the wherefores post-Ondoy. Senator Miriam Santiago screamed, “What happened to the P56-billion road tax that has been collected religiously since 2001, which should have been used to maintain roads and infrastructure?” Renowned architect Jun Palafox asked, “How did subdivision developers manage to build communities in areas already identified and known to be unsafe?” Senators asked, “Why was the NDCC so slow and ill-equipped to respond?” Media inquired, “Why has the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration’s (Pagasa) request for modern weather forecasting equipment been ignored for the past 20 years or so?” Local city officials looked at their city engineers and asked, “Who let the dam water out?”
The answer, of course, is as clear as the floodwater is murky. We’ve been scalped again and again by Ingloria’s bastards. The answer to all the plaintive recriminations and rhetorical questions goes back to the singular root cause: the deeply ingrained, all-pervasive, institutionalized corruption. Administration apologists will claim that corruption is pandemic, but we only have to look at global surveys to know that corruption is presently at its highest level, literally and figuratively. If Sodom and Gomorrah breathed fire and brimstone to cauterize the sinners, Ondoy and Pepeng inundated the region to flush out the corrupt. If only a huge letter C could be carved on the foreheads of crooked officials so that they were branded as plunderers for the rest of their lives, national disasters could be averted, and we could begin to dismantle our own Ninth Reich.
Bayani Fernando, in an unusual display of sympathy and uncharacteristic lack of belligerence, quickly went on TV as he was surveying the rampage of Ondoy in Marikina and declared, “Ako na ang una niyong sisihin. Pero kailangan din sigurong tanungin ang mga subdivision developers at mga nagtatapo ng basura kung saan-saan.” (You can blame me first. But you should also ask the subdivision developers and those who throw the garbage everywhere.)
Muntinlupa Rep. Ruffy Biazon scoffed at Bayani, “The calamity of Ondoy is much bigger than him, although it is true that his many years at MMDA was a failure in addressing the perennial flooding in Metro Manila. But it is more ridiculous for him to make a pitch for his presidential campaign by saying the political will (his campaign line) of the one leading the country will stop the repeat of flooding. But more ridiculous but already insulting is his refusal to resign his post in spite of claiming the blame for the tragedy,” he added.
As early as Thursday evening (Sept. 24), Pagasa had already issued flood warnings and raised storm signals by Friday. The National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) could have already coordinated with the concerned local government units (LGUs) and prepared an evacuation and rescue plan. The forced release of water from the Angat and other dams at the height of rainfall on Saturday further aggravated the flooding and hampered the evacuation. NDCC claimed that they only had 13 rubber boats, making rescue efforts inutile with many lives lost.
But where are the funds? In 2007 alone, the Philippines reportedly received official development assistance (ODA) commitments from foreign donors worth $8.9 million for disaster prevention and preparedness. From 2005 to 2007, $32.28 million was allocated for climate change-related initiatives. Then there is the government-appropriated calamity fund.
In her last State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 27, President Arroyo vowed that her government would continue to invest in the environment even as, according to her, the country is “safer from environmental degradation. As a country in the path of typhoons… we must be as prepared as the latest technology permits to anticipate natural calamities when that is possible; to extend immediate and effective relief when it is not. The mapping of flood- and landslide-prone areas is almost complete. Early warning, forecasting and monitoring systems have been improved.”
As usual, she lied and got found out.
Corruption has never found more fertile ground than now. It is at its peak. It permeates from top to bottom, inside and out. It is seen in the public and private sectors, from leader and followers alike, from Aparri to Jolo. The transaction size is almost irrelevant. It could be as humongous as the billion-peso NBN-ZTE type of scandal that reached up to the Palace, or as petty as under-the-table bribery, particularly in some government agencies. One-million-peso Le Cirque dinners, undeclared beach houses in California… do we still wonder why we have 13 measly rubber boats for rescue operations? Corruption has truly become entrenched in society and ingrained in our culture. It is expected, if not accepted. The reaction of most people has been to shrug it off or to experience fleeting episodes of indignation that are soon supplanted by the tribulations of daily life.
But the death of Cory Aquino revved the moral compass of the Filipino and awakened the seething outrage that this government thought it had successfully snuffed out. They may not join a rally, but they will choose the next leader with only one fundamental criterion: he must be the complete foil of the sitting president: incorruptible, trustworthy and transformational. Everything else is secondary to this principle. It is the only standard that matters. Questions of “preparedness” come only from people who lack the insight to realize what history has been trying to teach us these past nine years. Choose the one that has a good heart. Then make sure that power does not corrupt him. All else will follow.
Let us rout Ingloria’s bastards and anyone who sounds, looks, smells, feels and tastes like them. Let us peer into their hearts and see if they are black. If they remind us in any way of the current Palace resident, let us quickly carve out an imaginary L on their foreheads: Loser!
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