Freedom from crooks
BASED on the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential forum on “Integrity and Human Rights,” the presidential candidates need to do more to prove to the public they have a full appreciation of the interconnectedness of the justice and human-rights issues, on the one hand, and corruption and poverty, on the other.
For while most of them have been heard every so often spouting bold promises to fight corruption and eradicate poverty, they have not quite shown us that they will do so as part of a broader governance framework. Or one that’s not hostage to the notion that democracy and economic progress are exclusive of each other; or that socioeconomic development can be pursued outside of the nexus of justice and human rights.
At Tuesday’s forum, for instance, diplomats, human-rights experts and academics were clearly frustrated over the apparent lack of interest of the presidential candidates to discuss their human-rights agenda.
“A bit frustrating,” was the understatement of Chairman Leila de Lima of the Commission on Human Rights, one of the conveners of the forum—the others being the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Bisyon 2020. She said they were all hoping for a 100-percent attendance, or at least most of the candidates, who last week were active in all three forums on economic and related issues, successively sponsored by the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines, the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Fair Trade Alliance, and the Federation of Philippine Industries.
And even there, as we pointed out in an earlier editorial, most of the candidates’ responses to the questions thrown in these three economic forums indicated more or less just shopping lists of to-do’s; so much so that one is left hoping it’s only because they—and their expert advisers—are still finessing their strategies on such challenging issues as the fiscal health, growth and human development, business and state policy, local industries and globalization, among others. Given that, it wasn’t really surprising that little interest was displayed on Tuesday on the issues of justice and human rights vis-à-vis economic freedom.
And yet, as de Lima underscored at the sidelines of the forum, “issues on human rights and [addressing] corruption are two vital components of good governance.” She couldn’t help adding, “I can’t imagine any candidate who will not use these topics as a centerpiece [of his platforms].”
Asked why there are no other presidential bets attending the rights forum, dean Alex Brillantes of the University of the Philippines National College of Public Administration and Governance hazarded a guess, “Baka nagsasawa na…[Maybe they're getting tired of this].” It wasn’t clear if he meant the candidates are tired of appearing at forums and want to hit the campaign trail anew, or are tired of topics on human rights.
How, indeed, can anyone professing a wish to lead the country ever tire of these topics? UNDP country representative Renauld Meyer put it so well when he said, at the same forum on Tuesday, that the problem of corruption in the Philippines is similar to a cancer which can still be cured if only the patient “is psychologically prepared.” And by the way, there is no such thing as a small cancer in this context—the “more we are psychologically prepared, [the] easier [it is] for us to address corruption.”
Corruption as a systemic problem in the Philippines has weakened the institutions, impaired the justice system and hindered economic development, in his view, and this is best reflected in the Maguindanao massacre which, coincidentally, was perpetrated three months ago on Tuesday. To Meyer, it “reflected the systemic roots of corruption and how the rule of law has been used and abused to amass wealth.” That is why corruption should be tackled with a human-rights slant to put a human face to the problem. Amen. Sadly, few were listening.