By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
A new client came by the other day. He related he is from Baguio but he had the chance to frequent the Bicol area recently.
He related that the kind of corruption we have around here in the Cordillera is nothing compared to what they have down there. There are so many roads there that ended up in a forest, or a river or some other geographic feature which renders the infrastructure useless. The funding for these were motivated only by politicians’ greed—to have some sort of flood control ghost project to implement. Thus, there was an overpass supposed to remedy roads that are not serving their purposes and it never got finished.
In short, what I gathered from the guy are the initiating of a good number of infrastructures that never served what they were intended for.
That Cordillerans are more aware of their rights regarding government projects supposedly for their welfare. Such awareness serves as a deterrent against the execution of government projects in a blatantly corrupt manner.
In short, the lack of the watchful eyes of an intelligentsia—those highly educated elite of society—allows those in power to abuse the governed in a highly exploitative manner.
The question is, do we have really a conscientious intelligentsia ready to take the cudgels on behalf of the majority of Cordillerans who are of lower intelligence or education? The question reminds us of a supposed politician who supposedly cared for his constituents in a Cordilleran province splurging cash here and there benefitting members of the educated sector. He became a hero in the eyes of many. Then the flood control ghost projects and corruption involving billions of pesos came to light and things turned out to show he was one of them.
These show that those supposedly of higher kind of discernment were easily hoodwinked with a little cash here and there and projects that were corruption riddled.
But that just involved money. What if it involved their safety or a lot of struggle to really stand up for those who are being exploited?
We kid you not, most of the so called members of the intelligentsia will scamper away to cower for their own safety.
By the churning of social events, however, there will be a point where those who can stand up for us would be identifiable by their deeds.**
