Those were hard words hitting me hard.

I have respect for senior members of the House of Representatives being one of its youngest members, but that statement was too ‘in-your-face’ and, I think, too brutally honest. I guess I have to brace myself, there are indeed is still a lot of getting used to for me in the world of politics.

But hey, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to get used to anything that is wrong.  No matter the frankness, the idea that my “honest” colleague was promoting was, in conscience and principles, wrong.

I grew up in a strict household where I was taught to obey God long before I even understood the tenets of His laws. I simply was made to follow what is right and reject what is wrong, that simple.  Everything slightly removed from that simple principle is discarded from our home.

In God’s rules there are no gray areas, just black and white, right or wrong.

For as long as I can remember, corruption is being pointed at as the cause of the many ills in our society. So when the Party-list Citizens’ Battle Against Corruption (CIBAC) was formed, we received all kinds of heartwarming support, coming from different directions, from all walks of life.  I was overwhelmed by the encouragement we got simply for choosing a cause that is after every Filipino’s heart.

What I was not prepared for was the struggle ahead.  What I did not anticipate was the seriousness and the aggressiveness of the fight against corruption.

Surveys would show that politicians are the least trusted people all over the world. Having tasted politics a few years, I am not surprised.  

What surprised me is the fact that politicians don’t seem to mind that perception, coming from their constituents nonetheless. Nobody seems to care any more if civil servants are called or perceived as corrupt.

Corruption in government has become rampant and vulgar.  The media has become witness to this degradation. We’ve seen videos of government officials accepting bribes. We’ve seen documented proofs of ill-gotten wealth by people in power, and hundreds of data on how some highly-corrupted civil servants live luxuriously, well beyond their means.

Corruption is the venom that is crippling the systems in our society. We are witness to how this illness is flushing out the last vestiges of righteousness?

We know the results of this malaise of course – roads and bridges that will never be built, schools that will never rise to help educate our students, medicines that will never arrive at hospitals to save lives, money for scholarships that are gone forever, insurance funds for the poor and the aged that will never be there for the future, fertilizers for the farmers that will never enrich the soil, and water that will never quench thirst.

That, in a nutshell, is corruption for you.

And how do we cure this? 

In the newspaper, I read about how a foreign consultant who is in the payroll of the Philippine government was applauding the administration’s achievements in curbing corruption.  

This foreigner believes that although it is not gone entirely, the corruption problem in the country is not worsening and that we should stop putting too much interpretation to the observation of other entities like the World Bank telling the world that the Philippines is among the most corrupt countries in the region.

Now, that is a joke and no one is laughing.

Come to think of it, when it is about corruption jokes always come out, for example, when people complained about lack of jobs the administration said it is because Filipinos are choosy. That is a joke, yes?

When reports came out that the incidence of poverty went down, it’s because the administration thinks that a Filipino family can actually surviver with less than P100 a day. Now that is a painful joke.

When the President was caught talking to a COMELEC official during the elections of 2004, she said she did not violate any law.  So we turned her into a ring tone that we can all laugh about forever.

When a COMMELEC commissioner was caught talking to someone who sounded like the President, he denounced even his nickname to cover whatever it is both of them are hiding.  It is all a joke, but who is laughing?

What nobody can joke about is the fact that there are no visible actions that the ordinary Filipino and international communities can appreciate as far as the administration’s efforts to fight corruption is concerned.

Years ago, the Ombudsman admitted they have not caught any big fish, to charge with corruption. As a matter of fact the 5 top “big fish” cases of long ago are yet to yield acceptable and believable results, namely; the Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard controversy, the RSBS Pension Fund, the PEA-AMARI scam, the Tax Credit Scam case.

Some more years later the big fish pond has swelled. What do we have: the Fertilizer scam, the NLEX over-pricing controversy, etc. etc. etc. …

Oh, in terms of efforts, there is the P10 Million (or is it P1 Billion) fund for the anti-corruption campaign of course. But so far what we heard is that it has funded a singing competition and a poem-writing competition about corruption.  Now, that is funny.  You can laugh until your stomach ache.  You can laugh until the sting hits you, until the sting of corruption hits you hard.

Who is laughing? The joke is on the Filipino people.

Some forces would rather maintain the status quo to the point of even encouraging the people to surrender to the fact that corruption is a fact of life – that it is part of our political reality so let us not resist and just accept it.

If we surrender to these forces, then it’s almost like taking our own life or jumping to our own death.

The battle is hard but by fighting we’ve already won half of it.  It is therefore never a lost cause, fighting corruption that is.

Remember, God gives us challenges not to destroy us but to make us stronger.

If we can still feel the sting of corruption, then it means we still have enough senses left to fight further, that we still have enough energy left to resist it. Let us be thankful for the sting that we feel because it means it still hurts us and, by instinct, we will fight it and avoid it and try to curb it, if not for us, then for our future.