Yet, the virulence is not what got my goat. Steamed up as I was by Gadon’s vile behavior, President Bong-Bong Marcos (PBBM) heated me up some more when he stood pat on Gadon’s appointment to a Cabinet position, alleging insensitively that the position does not need the one holding it to be a lawyer. But doesn’t a Cabinet position need to be held by a decent and not a muck-raking professional?
But what really got my goat was the public’s deafening silence on the PBBM’s continued trust of a person with such despicable behavior. Besides being a vile and rabid defender of the Marcos family, what other qualifications does Gadon have that could make us accept the President’s claim that he will do a good job of the anti-poverty program?
PBBM showed a lack of moral sensitivity when he stood pat on Gadon’s Cabinet appointment in spite of the latter’s disbarment. But the Filipino public demonstrated the same moral numbness when it allowed the President to big-foot Gadon’s appointment to a Cabinet position. If this were to happen in morally sensitive countries, like France or Germany, there would already be mass protests, riots even.
It is bad enough that our officials do not have sound moral values. It is worse that we let them get away with it. This is a classic instance of our elitist political and inequitable economic systems being shielded from becoming democratic, equitable, and moral by our colonial culture of submission to and acceptance of whatever those in authority want for us… in our mistaken belief that they are representatives of God.
Thus, we submit to incompetent officials with a distorted sense of values who promote only their self-interests. We allow them to run (ruin?) our lives. We accept their unjust and corrupt ways without even a hint of a whimper. We not only let them get away with all kinds of vile actions we also, for our own selfish interest, vote them back into office to ruin the lives of many others.
The public’s failure to be horrified by PBBM standing pat on Gadon’s appointment to the Cabinet in spite of being disbarred by the Supreme Court tells me this society is losing its sense of decency. Without a moral social compass, we drift aimlessly in the stormy sea of political and economic ambiguity.
Meanwhile, the guardian of morality, the Church, just looks on, copping out with the lame excuse it should not get involved in politics. It would rather settle the issue of how to pray the Our Father than emphatically remind authorities that their subjects are equals they must serve justly and morally.
Finally, we ask the world to “Love the Philippines” when we really don’t love it, and love only ourselves.