Right-doing July 19, 2006

I'M still overwhelmed by Achbishop Ramon Arguelles' comment that "everybody cheated in the last elections anyway, some merely lost in the cheating." I got to thinking about it a little more deeply, only to get a lot more dismayed.

At the very least, it's not true at all. I did not see Raul Roco cheat in the last elections. He was so finicky about accepting donations from people and demanded much idealism from potential supporters. He pissed off those who were asking explicitly or implicitly "What's in it for me?" and berated them. I did not see "Brother Eddie" Villanueva cheat in the lastelections. He too carried a fairly high-minded campaign appealing to the virtuous and promising moral regeneration.

I do not know how the campaigns of Fernando Poe Jr. and Panfilo Lacson went. I was not privy to them. I leave it to their camps to debate Arguelles' contention.

The only one I saw -- and heard -- cheat was Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. She was the one who gave fertilizer funds away, courtesy of an agriculture undersecretary aptly named Joc-Joc, to local officials who desperately needed only the kind of fertilizer that encouraged growth of scruples. She was the only one who personally, repeatedly and insistently called up Garci to make sure she won by one million votes over Fernando Poe Jr.

But more than the lack of factual basis of Arguelles' contention, there is its lack of moral principle. That contention of course is nothing new. I've heard it alike from Arroyo's supporters and from sectors of a public grown cynical. "Lahat naman sila mandaraya." ["They are all cheaters."]

It's a variation of what every crook in government, civilian and military, says when he is caught with his hands in the cookie jar. "Hindi lang naman ako ang magnanakaw." ["I'm not the only thief."] That was what Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia said when he was being hounded for spiriting away "gifts" from contractors. That's what Joseph Estrada said about the past presidents when he was being hounded for corruption. The past presidents, he suggested, were bigger crooks. Indeed, his tormentor, Chavit Singson, invented crookedness. He was probably right on both counts.

But you grant that perfidy is rife, why should that naturally lead to the conclusion, "Let's just accept it" or worse, "Let's just reward the best cheat or thief of them all"? The fact that others have committed the same crime, or worse, does not make one innocent, it only makes the others equally guilty. The fact that iniquity is rife is not an invitation to bemore lenient, it is a compulsion to be stricter. The fact that "everybody does it" cannot make us want to tolerate it, it can only make us want to stop it.

The proposition that a general and worsening condition of wrongdoing justifies more wrongdoing rather than demands right-doing is an engraved invitation to moral anarchy. But for some strange reason, that proposition seems to count for much in these parts. For some strange reason, we find it easier to emulate vice than virtue, stupidity than wisdom. For some strange reason, we find it easier to throw ourselves off a cliff like lemmings because everyone's doing it rather than step back and ask ourselves why in God's name anyone would want to do it.

You see that easily in street life. Some idiot usurps the opposite lane to get ahead of a long queue in traffic, and instead of those who have fallen in line sending curses in his direction, they trail him like a magnet.

It's absolute madness and it's time we changed our mind-sets completely, with or without the aid of our bishops.

Even if we accept the proposition that everybody usurps the opposite lane, which has no factual basis since more vehicles are in line than out of it, why should we conclude that it is all right to usurp lanes and let's just reward those who do? Even if we accept the proposition that everybody steals, which does have factual basis in government, finding an honest soul in it today poses more problems than Lot had with Sodom and Gomorrah,why should we conclude that it is all right to steal, and let's just fry the small fry and let the big ones get away?

Even if we accept that every candidate cheats in elections, and that has no factual basis, too, since more presidential candidates in the last elections did not cheat than did, why should we conclude that it is all right to cheat in elections and give glory to Gloria?

Why shouldn't our attitude instead be: Everybody's usurping the opposite lane of streets, why don't we line the errant drivers up the side of the street, or against the wall, whichever is the more terrifying, and fine them steeply, or allow traffic cops to extort from them, whichever will put the fear of God and traffic in them? Every government official steals, why don't we submit their names to all the robbers, kidnappers and con men in this country so they would gain profound insights into the meaning of being fleeced? (At this point, I'm even willing to unleash Alfredo Lim with the mandate to paint the houses of the crooks red, if not seal their occupants in metal drums and float them in the Pasig River, with the sign, "Magnanakaw: Huwag tularan." ["Thief: Don't be like him."]

Everybody cheats in elections, so why not jail the worst of them, notably the one that would stop at nothing, including kidnapping, to win? Why not replace the innumerate election commissioners with those who know how to count? Why not fly in an international group of observers, and fill the office of the Commission on Elections with all sorts of bugs duly approved by judges so that none of the commissioners could so much as break wind without it registering on the surveillance Richter scale?

In short, everybody does wrong in this country, why not stop it and do right for a change? Or is the "everybody" so literal, so absolute, so total, there's nobody left to do a thing about it?

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