"TAYO'Y MAGLINGKOD PARA SA BAYAN, HINDI PARA SA BULSA!"
- rallying cry of the Chairperson Ordinary of the
State of Ariana, His Eminence, Darvinos de Mariquina
Today's Verse:
Matthew 20:26 (NIV)...Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,
In this verse, Christ lays down the doctrine that men become governors and rulers therein in order that they may serve their constituents, not to gloat in pride and abuse their power. If all rulers would apply this, then there is no need for checks and balances. Unfortunately, we are not living in an ideal world where rules are 100% efficiently imposed. The real world has space for disorder, for broken promises, for evil.
In the corruption-infested Philippine political arena, the goodness of the righteous government officials is usually overshadowed by the scandalous and horrible iniquities of other (usually higher) government officials. This is one of the reasons why our people have lost faith on the government. They no longer believe that the government can steer this state (country) to progress. "Ikaw ang naiiba 'pag ikaw lang ang matino." (You'll be "different" if you're the one who is righteous) This has been somehow a trend, according to the numerous testimonies of my relatives and friends who were (some are still in the government) once government officials - first hand witnesses to the corruption that shrouds the bureaucracy. The cancer of the society is still eminent in the government. Quoting Asin's famous song "Balita" ("news"), "ginatungan ng mga kabulukan hanggang sa lumago", this is the reason why there is still corruption in the government. Since most of the corruption goes unpunished, hence there is a great lack of deterrents that could have reduced the "growth" of corruption. If we want to clean up the system, then a re-indoctrination should be done on many government officials to remind them that their true duty is to serve the society and not their stomachs.
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We are lucky that we have PNoy as our President because, in my opinion, he really wants to clean up the government. Unfortunately, his lackeys aren't showing the same vigor in doing so. As time goes by, I even think that PNoy is heavily influenced by his "less righteous" lackeys, resulting in poor and unwise decisions. We shall see....