The Zamboanga City Trouble: Symptom of Corruption

By now everyone in the Philippines has been inundated with the events spurred by the revelations of Benhur Luy, the whistle-blower in the PHP 10 billion pork-barrel scam. And then we have the Zamboanga City 'rebellion' of sorts.

What is so perpetually chronic about the Philippines is that if you are a thief (yes, Philippine Congress), a rebel (Honason) or a secessionist (see Misuari) you are rewarded with a plum government position. As in the case of MILF chief Nur Misuari, leadership in the ARMM. As in the case with Honasan, those who have no respect for laws of the Philippines will one day rear that ugly head. And so I was not surprised when Misuari led his men into a now week-long rampage of the city.

Corruption is not only manifested by our career political thieves, aka Senators and Congressmen, it is also incubating military personnel. The failure of the Philippine military to once and for all stamp out the Muslim secessionist movement, not to mention the NPA conundrum, speaks of the rotten structure of Philippine society. In this case, the military.

Despite all the money allotted to it, the Philippine Army is nothing more than a paper army, full of generals paid to the head yet manned by ill-fed, ill-supplied, ill-trained troops. Where does all this money goes? After being siphoned by corrupt generals, what is left for the average Filipino soldier is nothing more than a pittance.

It is reasonable to suppose that the Philippine Army, because of its legendary corruption, matched only by its legendary incompetence, incarnated by its legendary retinue of generals whose legendary kleptomanic tendencies are only in turn matched by the rapacity of civilian authorities, is what keeps this trouble in Mindanao, with the NPA, a perpetual caricature of Philippine life.

Philippine society is so rotten, so corrupt, so fragmented that each grabs for himself what he can without regard for national responsibility, much less patriotic feelings. This is the greatest tragedy, when public service is seen as an opportunity to enrich oneself and ones family at the expense of the nation - and shockingly, Filipino's actually tolerate it! That is the even greater tragedy.