EDITORIAL - Standards of cheating

Cheating in a round of golf is not enough basis to fire newly-appointed Customs commissioner Angelito Alvarez even if the self-appointed angels calling for his downfall insist that if you cheat in golf then you are likely to cheat elsewhere.

Nit-picking over cheating in golf is asking too much perfection from ordinary mortals. Golfers may portray the game as one played among gentlemen, but it is not the only transactional situation involving people where satisfaction rests heavily on honesty.

Even the "uglier" sports do not provide a good night's sleep if one's conscience is relentlessly chased by incidences of unexposed cheating. In other words, conscience is a by-product of character and not of sporting preference.

Alvarez may have cheated in a little game of golf, but so have so many others in their own endeavors, many of them far less sporting than a friendly game. Yet they inhabit every nook and cranny of society without so much as attracting a whimper of complaint.

As we are willing to honeymoon with President Noynoy Aquino, so should we honeymoon with his retinue. Alvarez deserves the same chance we are all willing to give Noynoy to prove himself within a certain reasonable period of time.

For there is no such thing as being squeaky clean in an otherwise sinful environment as the imperfect world we live in. Indeed, if we have to truly push the envelope, everybody is a cheat, in the sense that we must have cheated at least once in our lives.

Cheating can come in many forms. The more reprehensible are the serious ones, as in cheating in elections or stealing from the public coffers. The more innocuous ones may take the form of beating someone else to a line, or stealing glances at a half-exposed bosom in a jeep.

Even not telling the father confessor all your sins is cheating, which is in fact more serious than cheating in a round of golf as you are trying to cheat God himself instead of the priest, who is merely God's agent.

Now, pray tell, who among those calling for the head of Alvarez have not tried a little cheating themselves? There is no such thing as a perfect world. We can only struggle mightily to approximate some of its conditions. Let Alvarez prove himself beyond a golf scorecard.