OUR country, after almost a year and a half of President Benigno Cojuangco Aquino the 3rd’s speeches to create a national Culture of the Daang Matuwid (Righteous Path), sadly
continues to be an overwhelmingly crooked land. Here a Culture of Deception and Mendacity prevails alongside the Culture of Graft and Corruption, the Culture of Incompetence and Laziness, and the Culture of Impunity that exalts thieves, murderers and dishonest officials.
Many aspects of our society are veritable schools for the promotion of despicable conduct. It is in these schools of our society where children learn to practice bad habits and despise the virtues. It is also in these daily social training schools where the adherence of adults to these cultures of ugliness and immorality is reinforced.
The streets of our urban centers are schools for the rejection of law and order and the rule of law. Children learn — as jeepney and bus passengers — to reject common sense, the traffic rules, the notion of respect for authority, the basic idea that there is a right place for every activity.
The child traveling alone or with her mother or a yaya (nanny) learns to reject the common sense rule that when waiting for the jeepney one should stand in the safety of the sidewalk and not in the middle of the street.
The child also learns that the jeepney can stop and unload passengers anywhere, in the middle of the street or in the center of a junction, where they could be sideswiped by other vehicles.
The child learns to see the policemen and the MMDA traffic enforcers the way jeepney drivers view them — as being merely a bunch of corrupt fools for they allow the risk-taking and rule-breaking to go on and they take the money the drivers hand out to them.
The roads are also a school for ridiculous and unethical credit-grabbing, for lack of taste and good form. The child sees huge billboards with the faces of clown-looking officials claiming that they are responsible for the repair of the road or the building of a new one.
The child then hears his mother or another jeepney passenger cursing the congressman, mayor or councilor for shamelesslessly claiming to be responsible for the road project when it is really the people and their taxes that are making it possible.
Garapal! Shameless! Kapal-muks! Thick-skinned! Hayop! Animal! The child hears the adults in the jeepney exclaim. Now the child also learns that it must be all right to be a thick-skinned Garapal Monster. If not, why is that man the rich mayor or the rich congressman?
Nemesis of shameless officials
Now comes a laudable effort to at least end the shameless credit-grabbing for infrastructure projects by the nemesis of shameless officials, Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago.
She has filed Senate Bill No. 1967, “An Act Prohibiting Public Officers from Claiming Credit through Signage Announcing a Public Works Project.” We commend her for this initiative and urge our readers to do what they can to help pass the bill—by writing letters and making phone calls and shooting off Twitter messages and commentaries.
But we have a slight suggestion for a change in the title of the bill. Please change “Announcing” to “About,” Madam Senator. The Garapal Monsters will take the word “announcing” literally. They are so shameless that they still mount billboards and posters with their names and faces without directly claiming credit or announcing anything but only, for example, saying: “This project will ease the travel burdens of the people of this city.” The title must be changed and a sentence added in the bill so that public officials are forbidden from having anything to say in a billboard or poster about any public works project.
Senator Defensor Santiago, a candidate for a judge’s seat in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, filed SB 1967 on July 22. It is now being deliberated on by the chamber’s public works committee.
Broadcasters have dubbed it “Miriam’s anti-epal” bill. “Epal” is street lingo for “ma-papel” — “role player” — meaning “an undeserving starring role seeker.”
In the explanatory note to the bill, the senator deplores the “prevalent practice among public
officers, whether elected or appointed, to append their names to public works projects which were either funded or facilitated through their office….This is unnecessary and highly unethical.”
She says this penchant for credit-grabbing billboards and posters “promotes a culture of political patronage and corruption.”
Sen. Santiago also believes that allowing elected or appointive officials to grab undue credit for infrastructure projects “diminishes the importance that the public needs to place on supporting government officials, not because of their popularity, but because of their essential role in policy determination, whether on the local or national level.”
Penal provisions of the bill
If the bill becomes a law, which we pray it does, a jail term of between six months and one year will be meted out to a public official found guilty of having had his or her name or image printed on an item of “signage announcing a proposed or ongoing public works project.”
The law if passed would only allow signs to carry the name, image or logo of the local or national government agency responsible for the project.
The Department of Public Works and Highways, coordinating with the Department of Interior and Local Government and Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, would have three months from the day the law takes effect to remove “all existing signage” that violate its provisions.
It’s a good law necessary for the development of a rational Philippine Republic. May our lawmakers be moved by the the light of patriotism and reform to pass Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago’s bill.
It will surely be enacted once the bill is passed by Congress, for the President supports it. He has given a great example of taste and class in banning billboards extolling him for public works projects.
