The Suffocating Talk on PDAF: The Pork Barrel as Greasy as it could Get

I have been quietly listening to the barrage of unending coverage over the PDAF of lawmakers making a constant buzz over the airwaves over the past four weeks. Indeed, it is bordering on obsession. Everyone talks about it, no one seems really to understand its implications - ever.

While President Aquino has signaled his willingness to revamp the PDAF, unless the Filipino people truly become politically mature, socially proactive and culturally re-educated about our own culture, we will have more of the same, as usual.

The PDAF is a symptom of the damaged, sclerotic cultural climate that the Philippines can't seem to get over. It is the entrenched character of patronage politics, the Filipino sense that politics is really stealing, the belief that corruption is unavoidable, and so therefore everyone must just take advantage of power and connections and get the best for oneself and one's family.

The Filipino lack of national cultural consciousness is at the root of the problem. Unless we educate ourselves about ourselves, about our culture, about our heritage, then government is seen by the people and politicians alike as a treasure chest to be plundered. The Filipino people is as guilty as the rapacious politicians who steal from the national coffers almost as a hobby bordering on kleptomania. In fact, the Filipino people perpetuates corruption, allows corruption and practically advertises the need for corruption when the average Juan demands from politicians money during elections, begs for money instead of better services, and most of all, tolerates corruption by repeatedly electing the same set of rotten cabal of political cadre with nothing to offer to the people except saturate them with money and other superficial material assistance during elections only. It is as if the Filipino people demands mediocrity from its political leaders - nothing else by that chronic slave attitude of perpetual sucking up to those in power.

They say that even in a flawed democracy like ours, it is still the people who elects, who chooses, who tolerates the ingrained culture of thievery in Philippine politics. There is corruption because the average Filipino accepts corruption as a necessary facet of politics.

Hope is nowhere to be found than the Filipino mind realizing its self-induced surrender to the whims of vested interests must go. We have to GROW up as a people politically, culturally and nationally. Otherwise, a year from now, we will have more of the same, this brouhaha about the Napoles Scam will just be another figment of our fickle national memory - until of course the next juicy political scandal rears itself again.