Time to take the moral high ground!

House Speaker Jose de Venecia met with Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) and agreed on a Joint Vision to take the moral high ground and end their potentially dangerous rift. Actually, it is politically dangerous to both true-blooded politicos! Can something really come out from this? Perhaps I should rephrase this question: Can politicians really take the moral high ground? If you ask me, all this is mere talk, what we want to see is action! Will this really lead to a revamp of the Arroyo cabinet?

With less than three years to go on her Presidential term, what can we expect from those who would take over cabinet positions in so short a term? Chances are these people might be worse than the previous Secretary. Remember that old saying, “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are”? What this saying means is, if you are surrounded by corrupt people, chances are that you, yourself are just as corrupt! So what can we expect from a revamped cabinet? Another bunch of corrupt Secretaries and Undersecretaries?

Again we ask, what about House Speaker de Venecia? Didn’t he also violate the law when he gave his son some kind of special consideration so he could “profit” from that ill-fated broadband deal? Talking about JDV’s son, Joey has apparently gone to a Makati Police office claiming that Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) Secretary Larry Mendoza and his Assistant Secretary Reynaldo Berroya and Bureau of Corrections Director Ricardo Dapat were out to assassinate him. All this was based on an information coming from a retired Lt. Gen. Jaime delos Santos.

This Joey de Venecia III seems to be shooting himself on the foot and is showing signs of paranoia. He not only accused the Comelec Chairman of bribery, he is accusing the top officials of the Arroyo Government of plotting his assassination! Isn’t this too much Joey de Venecia we’re reading in the news? Perhaps he is enjoying the limelight, while the rest of the nation suffers from the political instability of his misdeeds.

Meanwhile, it would be interesting to note what moral high ground the Arroyo administration would follow. At this point, God has shown Pres. Arroyo the right direction to follow and all roads lead to Erap, who is demanding that pardon from the President. I have already gotten a deluge of texts from people who are diametrically opposed to giving the convicted Erap that pardon.

Here are just a couple of examples: “To grant Joseph Estrada pardon is to encourage corruption. It is tantamount to telling our gov’t officials and politicians that crime pays and how! Pls pass! Here’s another text message being passed around:“If GMA gives full pardon to Erap, it makes a mockery of our judicial system. We should not allow this travesty to Justice happen. Ronnie Puno is pressuring PGMA because he has always been a loyal dog to Erap. Let’s expose them now! Pls pass”

No doubt Civil Society is vehemently against giving Erap pardon, not because we are an unforgiving nation, but rather it is because the deposed President has time and time again shown only his arrogance and abused all the special privileges he was granted, where ordinary Filipinos would have been thrown to a filthy and crowded jail cell! Erap has shown the nation that the rich and famous are virtually above our laws. This is why many of us believe that the Sandiganbayan showed a very soft attitude to Erap. But now that he has been convicted, it is time that he should be treated like an ordinary convict because our understanding in this country is that crime doesn’t pay… more so when it is committed by a sitting President!

* * *

In the midst of all this political turmoil swirling in the nation’s capital, acting Foreign Secretary Esteban Conejos Jr. pledged to eradicate extreme hunger, poverty and inequality by the year 2015 in support of the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations (UN). While I encourage people to dream, it is sad that too many of our government functionaries dream of things that are unreachable.

Eradicating poverty, hunger or inequality may be a noble goal, but please don’t put a deadline on this. We haven’t even given the Filipino people any justice in the past 21 years that we were able to remove the Marcos dictatorship. For me, when justice truly reigns in this country, only then can we truly attain equality. With justice, corruption will stop and when we eradicate corruption, only then can this nation start growing and then poverty can become history. But alas, all these are motherhood statements and a mere pipe dream. We can only hope and sigh that someday the Philippines will be a better nation, run like heaven by morally upright Filipino politicians!