Systematic looting

Corruption is said to have become endemic in our country.

- ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN

Is plunder ingrained in our culture? Maybe the seeds were planted when Europeans "discovered" our islands and named their colony after a Spanish king.

There emerged a tiny, entitled ruling class whose principal mission was to exploit the natives and plunder local resources, enrich themselves and then return to their country. There was no incentive for them to empower the natives, through quality education or upliftment from poverty.

Half a millennium later, we're still seeing the same systematic looting. But this time, the perpetrators are fellow Filipinos, who go home to mansions in gated villages, many of them guarded by security officers on the public payroll.

The details emerging are proving our worst suspicions of why people in our country are ready to kill to win public office, and to kill some more to hold on to power, and to pass on that power to their succeeding generations. Public office is treated as a birthright. Developing a meritocracy never stood a chance in our society.

Today, as more dismaying details of large-scale corruption come out in connection with flood control projects, people are asking if there are decent workers in government.

I'd like to believe that honest and dedicated folks still outnumber the crooks in government. The honest ones just need to be given the knowhow or capacity to detect and report anomalies, with the assurance that they will be protected from reprisals, and with the certainty that their reports will be acted upon.

We can see this in the flood of tips sent to the sumbongsapangulo.ph site, set up mainly for flood control projects. Many of those details including documents could have only come from insiders in government.