raison d'État

Je ne suis pas d'accord avec ce que vous dites, mais je me battrai jusqu'à la mort pour que vous ayez le droit de le dire. -Voltaire

When my teacher in painting asked me if I was going to the interfaith rally and call for PGMA's resignation, I smiled and said, "No, Sir. I've changed."

When I got back home, I checked my mail from digi-ek and found messages from fellow Kule alumni who were wondering why they didn't want to join protest actions anymore. Was it because of burn-out? Or new priorities?

Here is what one of my friends wrote:

Marami nagsasabi pagod na mga tao sa politika. And then i realized na yung mga nagsasabi nun ay mga tao sa age group natin and older, mga jaded former activists or people in positions of power or mga middle management types na masaya na sa comfort zones nila. Young people have not yet had the chance to get tired of politics. At mukhang tulad natin noon, meron pa ring idealism. I am finding all this very interesting.

As for me, I feel as idealistic as ever about the Philippines, but this is tempered by pragmatism and, I hope, a bit more wisdom. After joining the moral revolution of People Power 2- and right now experiencing déjà vu (it looks like Estrada all over again)- I now choose to be guided by raison d'État or political reason.

Raison d'État was successfully used by Cardinal de Richelieu, First Minister of France, to make it the dominant country in 17th century Europe; it asserts that the well-being of the state justifies whatever means are employed to further it, the national interest supplanting the medieval notion of a universal morality. If it is true that the CBCP took into account geopolitical considerations in coming up with its lukewarm statement on the ZTE bribery scandal, they were merely following in the footsteps of the French cardinal.

I have to ask our bishops, though: what truth do you still seek? What else do we still need to know? Jun Lozada is telling the truth about how our government works today and we should defend his life and his right to continue speaking it.

Nonetheless, I choose to view this truth from different angles, one of which is structural: ours is a country in transition from a rule by law to a rule of law.

It wasn't too long ago when cheating in the elections, giving bags of cash to local politicians, and getting kickbacks were considered normal in the Presidency. How did T., one of PGMA's assistants, once describe her to me? She has to play the game so she won't be eaten alive. As we strengthen our institutions, the need for Presidents to "play the game"- for pakikisama- in order to turn the wheels of government will become less and less. The scandals faced by the current administration- exposed in part by developments in communication technology- are the birth pangs along our journey to modernity.

I agree that the solution to our current problems is systemic. Finding an alternative to the current leadership is not enough: we need mechanisms and institutions that would eliminate graft and corruption, problems which have no place in a modern and developed nation-state.

We need to computerize our voting system before 2010. We need to make government procurement more transparent. We need to eliminate the pork barrel, which is the source of a lot of kickbacks. We need more incentives for creating and distributing wealth, a more efficient tax collection system, and higher pay for our public servants.

Here's another such mechanism: wikileaks, a website where you can securely upload evidence of corruption and other unethical behavior in government.