The briber and the bribed

PDAF(Priority Development Assistance Fund) and DAP (Disbursement Acceleration Program) are two different issues. In the PDAF the focus is on the senators and congressmen for having allegedly connived with Janet Napoles and Co. to funnel their congressional assistance to non-existent NGOs.

In DAP, the issue directly involves the President. Although the money eventually went also to the senators and congressmen/women, who impeached and convicted Chief Justice Renato Corona, the issue comes down to whether he had the right under the Constitution to gather the moneys from savings of the different departments and use these for another purpose, in this case as it turns out according to Sen. Jinggoy Estrada said in his privileged speech, to augment PDAF allocations in payment for impeaching Corona.

I think there is evidence lying around somewhere to prove how both were planned and manipulated. I just got a text from someone who said he had the evidence. He should come forward with it. According to this source that I cannot identify, the Napoles list was cleaned up to exclude Drilon, Angara, Pangilinan, Tupas among others and also not to dig up the malversation of the Malampaya fund project.

Not to worry, it will come up sooner than later. I am a believer in karma and that in the end exacts justice. The question that comes up at the present time is who is more guilty, the briber or the bribed?

And then of course there is the purpose for which the bribery was used. So far, with media more focused on the senators, members of Congress etc. the public anger is being vented on them. It is easier to understand outright stealing and deception that marked the PDAF.

But if it is true as Senator Jinggoy Estrada said in his privileged speech that DAP had to be used to augment the bribery for the certain conviction of CJ Corona, then the focus should now turn to the briber, in this case, an alleged handiwork of the President in cooperation with his budget secretary.

In my opinion in the act of bribery, the briber is the more guilty, the more malevolent and the more injurious. The bribed has a personal culpability when he receives money and keeps public money for himself. Ironically that is easier understood by the masses.

But the briber destroys a system, the rule of law and the moral fiber of society. That is what DAP is about. Its evil is less tangible nor visible. With all eyes on the justices, I hope that is uppermost in their minds when they decide on DAP on July 1 —  how to save the country from utter perdition. Indeed as we are seeing now corruption from the top affects the entire fabric of society. The weight of example on workings of society is of paramount importance. Graft may have been happening all along but not in the blatant manner and shocking proportion.

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According to a survey made by the Ibon Foundation “three out of every five Filipinos have had difficulty buying enough food for the past three months.” It surveyed 1,500 respondents from April 24 to 30 and came up with results that 59.3 percent claimed they found it difficult to buy food during that period.

It also reported an increase in respondents who had difficulty paying for their children’s education, from 43.7 percent in January to 46.4 percent in April. Add to this the costs of transport that has risen from 43.6 per cent to 46.9 and water from 36.1 to 43.5. Ditto for electricity with 66.4 per cent also having a hard time with paying their electric bills.  It is good that Ibon has  put the rising costs of living in figures but most people already know that. Life in general has become more difficult because of rising costs.

I was at a businessmen’s meeting recently and I am not sure they were convinced of the hardship suffered by a majority of Filipinos. Some of them, of course are more geared towards looking at the stock exchange boards and announcements from credit agencies who say the Philippines has the fastest rising economy. Philippine society seems to be of two worlds, one for the rich and the other for the poor. And observations coming out from the news is that in the Philippines the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider.

This is troubling as Thomas Piketty has written on the widening inequality in the world today. Most of us worry about the consequences at the growing gap with our thoughts focused on its repercussions. In the Philippines we have been talking about revolution for a long time and the serious breakdown of law and order because of our many poor. But he said something more important and a better way of looking at poverty.

“Inequality has to be viewed not only in terms of its consequences, but also as something that we have reason to disapprove of in its own right. So you have to go beyond the consequences. There’s an increase in inequality in many countries in the world and we should be worried about that,” Picketty said. I don’t know whether I was able to convey the meaning of that thought to the businessmen — there is indeed a difference between worrying about the consequences of the widening gap between the rich and the poor and accepting that it is wrong. It would lead us to different policy directions if we accept it is just wrong to live in a society that does not care if the divide between the rich and the poor continues to widen.