Not enough to be righteous

IN the last few days, one of the egroups I joined has been deluged with emails, calling for ‘moral restoration’ and urging people to unite to elect ‘righteous people’ into office from the presidency down to the lowest barangay councilman. Most of these letters are well-written and inspired, and they sound much like battle cries. As you probably suspect, these are written by priests and former seminarians whose pens have been sharpened to the finest edge by their mentors and the years devoted to practicing their skills.

Their thesis can be reduced into less verbiage: Corruption has become endemic in government. This is the reason why services are not being delivered and why so much money is wasted. This is also being blamed for the poverty of the people. To solve these problems, let’s change those in government with morally upright individuals.

While I do not disagree with putting righteous people in government, I strongly disagree with the assumption that morally upright people will do the right thing once in government. It is simply not enough to be incorruptible to be able to run the affairs of government. You need more than moral uprightness and good intentions to perform the complicated functions of governance.

First, you need to have the right direction, hence, the correct analysis of issues that give rise to poverty, unemployment, incompetence, corruption, nepotism and all the other –isms that make life miserable for our people. Without such an analysis, even morally righteous people won’t go a long way. They will only get lost in the convoluted bureaucracy that has become our government. Worse, they might even be coopted in the process.

At the moment, I don’t see this analysis in the statements issued so far. Not one has even made an attempt to issue their position on certain critical issues of concern. Well, there were lame and undefined references to sustainable agriculture and environment, as if mentioning these would suffice. To be blunt about it, I think these guys have not seriously thought about these issues – otherwise they would bother to make themselves clear…And to think that these are not the only issues the group must make a stand on.

Motherhood statements and battle cries that have so far been floating around would be probably good for those in the academe and the middleclass, but not to the sectors that earn their daily bread, like the farmers, fisherfolk and workers. Things have to be clear to them, otherwise you can’t rally them with you.

I can understand that uniting people on similar goals can be tedious and difficult, but it makes more sense than simply issuing motherhood statements.

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