Institutional integrity

Institutions largely define the course of a people’s history. Where they are strong, they serve to moderate the many disquieting and even disruptive influences that daily threaten the stability of any community. At their best, functional institutions enable a community to efficiently use its material and human resources. Development predictably takes place and mostly everyone shares its natural and inevitable benefits. In this optimal setting, people gain confidence in their capabilities and their pride strengthens as they master the numerous challenges of collective development.

When institutions fail to properly develop, a community’s sense of cohesiveness weakens. Its awareness of a collective purpose depreciates and a sense of drift overtakes most of those in the community. The normally manageable concerns of collective life deteriorate into crises that increasingly threaten the community’s well-being. Most people become susceptible to unprincipled pragmatism and emasculating cynicism gets to be a common way of life.

Of these two scenarios, one will not err much in locating the Philippine institutions and Filipinos in the second rather than the first group. This painful assessment is validated by findings of recent academic surveys. Whether one highlights a finding of much hopefulness induced by seasonal considerations like Christmas and the coming New Year or one of significant hopelessness generated by the country’s persistently worsening difficulties, the essential public perception is one of critical times, of institutions and authorities that have not performed well to date and cannot be trusted to do better in the future. Consequently, most people get to think in terms of pragmatic self-help (KKK or kanya-kanyang kayod), of each one best taking care of himself/herself and forgetting about others or, at least, relegating others — the poor and the grossly disadvantaged most particularly – to being extremely distant secondary considerations.

Gone are the communal values of balikatan (collective effort, a common shouldering of whatever needs to be done), malasakit (compassion or shared concern), pagkakaisa (unity) and walang iwanan (togetherness with no possibility of desertion or abandonment).

Communal identification and institutional loyalty become increasingly problematic as pragmatic individualism dominates the calculus of mostly everyone.

Reflected by much of the public, one may offer rationalizations of kapit-sa-patalim-na-buhay ( life on the thinnest edge of a knife, e.g. a much threatened physical survival) for so much that atomizes communal life and destroys institutional as well as personal integrity in this country. One may regret it much but it is difficult to fault people mired in the most difficult circumstances for wanting principles, lacking morality and betraying whatever is "good and beautiful" in life.

However, wantonly displayed by many of the nation’s leaders and those who seek positions of leadership in the coming May 2004 election, the selfishness, greed and opportunism that subvert a people’s sense of community must be exposed and forcefully repudiated. Current moves by politicians that mock serious ideological identity, genuine political partisanship, distinct party platforms and clear governance priorities ought to be severely dealt with. Imprisonment now not being a possible option since these acts have not yet been criminalized, critical voter support come election day at least could be denied these aggressive politicians.

This nation’s idea of what constitutes a heinous crime should be radically reinvented. Plunderers, drug lords and rapists are not the only ones who are capable of heinous acts. Equally capable and culpable are those who confound an already severely disoriented public as regards the meaning of political concepts like "democracy", "oligarchy", "administration", "opposition", "party identity", "party personality", "political coalitions" and "personal alliances", among others. In these critical times, politicians who facilitate national confusion and cynicism by repeated acts of turncoatism ought to be summarily dealt with. Their blatant political promiscuity criminally weakens a republic that has yet to be strong.

The institutional integrity of political parties deserves special attention. Their party labels need to be subjected to a rigorous truth-in-labeling test. Parties that claim to be nationalist, liberal, democratic, reformist, or to be mass-based, action-oriented, or national-unity focused must periodically be required to validate their nominal claims. When these political entities make false claims as regards their actual composition and political commitments, they are far more dangerous to the public than drug companies misrepresenting their chemical content and their curative properties.

Where institutional integrity fails to develop, much that is good in a person is aborted or even corrupted. Personal integrity suffers when institutions are unable to provide an environment that acknowledges and rewards it. The sad state of the nation’s political institutions is the primary reason why most of our politicians are such a laughable lot.

A cautionary note: one must not laugh when confronted by the breed. We all pay a terrible cost for indulging in this kind of laughter.