Still springing

You would think, with the daily exposes that grab our headlines these days, that depression would be the emotion of the day. A billion pesos paid for a year’s supply of coffee by PAGCOR? Second hand helicopters passed off as brand new to the military, upon the alleged influence of the former First Gentleman Arroyo, and violating all the requirements, running through bidding to inspection until acceptance, for government procurement contracts? Military men hired to swipe election ballots and switch them with fake ones so certain candidates would win? 

Every day, we get reminded of how pitiful and pathetic our system of government is. We trusted these guys. We voted them into their positions. We left them alone to handle the reins of government. We let them handle the funds that were taxed from our earnings. We believed their promises and pledges. Then, while life was humming at its daily pace, and as we went home to our beds thinking, hoping, believing, that somehow, the system was working, we didn’t know we were actually being hoodwinked. Bled dry. Raped. 

Yup. Even as the press whined and exhorted then, trying to rattle the politicians into a semblance of fealty to the public trust, even as stories came out on excesses and million peso meals, the recurring theme of those days was still impunity. It is now obvious they could not have cared less about what we thought, as secret deals and even more schemes to shaft the government were eagerly entered into. Hundreds of millions allegedly released to President Arroyo in the last quarter of the last year of her presidency? For what purpose, exactly?

But as every new sensational story lands on the headlines, I find my spirits, perversely enough, rising. I am, inexplicably, happy. Finally, a sense of vindication. Things are being done right. People are seeing that corruption truly does not pay (at least in this administration) and are now scuttling off the sinking ship, trying to be the first to blow the whistle so they can be the first to claim immunity.

So President Aquino must be doing something right. He’s sending the right message to crooks. Both future, as well as all those rats who fed off Gloria Arroyo’s reign. If they weren’t sophisticated enough to lay a false paper trail, if the flow of funds doesn’t jive, then they’re going to get cottoned on to by the hounds let loose by the President.

Probably the first to read the portents was Senator Miguel Zubiri, who resigned this week due to the growing evidence coming out and proving all the more that cheating had occurred, giving him more votes than he really garnered in the last elections. I can’t imagine the four year ordeal of Koko Pimentel, who’s been slugging it out at the courts to prove he was cheated and that he should have been proclaimed as the 12th Senator.

The jaded amongst us (and I count the chauffeur I was talking to the other day in this group) believe that this was just a brilliant PR move by Zubiri, that this is his way to wash his hands off the taint of ‘cheater,’ and a way as well to get re-elected to the Senate. Whatever his reason, all I felt, again was, joy. Finally, things are getting better. Some politicians are doing the right thing. They’re apologizing. They’re withdrawing their counter-protests. They’re owning up to their mistakes.

This was just exemplified last Friday by our year-old Secretary of Justice, who apologized to the very people she’s been attacking. Why? Because she gave out the wrong information to the press (and ergo, the public.) Never mind she relied on information she only received from her subordinates. Never mind she had an excuse. Since she uttered it, she took responsibility for it, and then she apologized.Would we have seen this humility during the last administration from the then-titans? I doubt it.

Whatever dissatisfaction the populace feels at the moment with President Aquino’s term, and with what’s he’s done or failed to do, I’m afraid I’m going to have to swim against the currents.Given what we’ve seen over the course of a year, I really do think there’s good reason to hope. And that cynical ole me talking.