EDITORIAL - Altering history

As if we didn’t have enough institutions compromised, we now find the integrity of public records in the National Archives undermined by the latest political scandal. The alleged tampering of records on microfilm, described to the Senate in detail by three archives employees last week, showed how easy it is in this country to alter even personal history.

With a bit of computer wizardry, citizenship can be gained or lost. What will certain individuals pay for that kind of service? How many illegal aliens have received resident alien status or even Philippine citizenship based on tampered documents? Equally alarming for the nation is the possibility that such technological hocus-pocus is being used, or may soon be, for criminal activities such as land-grabbing and carjacking which rely on deft document forgery.

Because we have seen how easy it can be to alter even information stored on microfilm, we can expect more legal challenges to documents presented in court. Since the nation lacks experts to determine the authenticity of documents, you can see the courts, many of which are already saddled with case backlogs, being overwhelmed by additional work.

We may also see a rush, particularly among politicians and possibly big businessmen, to get certified copies of documents from the archives before any more records are altered and used against them by their rivals. Who knows, by this time some of these individuals may already be too late.

It’s bad enough that with topsy-turvy official decision-making and judicial intervention, contracts particularly for big-ticket government projects are now worth less than toilet paper in this country. Now the sanctity of public documents has also been undermined by a scandal that remains unresolved. No record is reliable – not documents in black and white, not information on microfilm or computer diskettes.

The scandal at the National Archives has just upped the chaotic situation in this country by several notches. And there are good indications that we have not yet felt its full impact.