LIVING IN UNCERTAINTY

The Philippines is becoming one great uncertainty. With the Senate investigations on a national broadband project pushed by Malacanang and its cohorts, corruption entrails are coming out in great deluge from the halls. What is surprising here is that the People's Republic of China is very much involved in the deal, as the provider of the loan that will foot the project. Why is China doing that, dealing with a corrupt administration? No there has to be some kind of ethical stand on dealing with such governments that condone corruption and human rights violations.

Yet the number one witness testifying to the corruption is half-Chinese, half Filipino, Rudy Lozada, whose father always instilled in him the need to be grateful to the country as it had been to him, a father of 13 children. Lozada has explained a great deal of the methods of corruption in the government deals that it is now a great question mark how the Filipino people had been duped up to the highest levels of the State. Even the admonition of the former secretary authorized to approve the deal who got Lozada as consultant was very revealing: "Moderate their Greed."

Actually greed is worse in Pilipino -- swapang, ganid, sugapa. Those are the terms used in the country they are far worse, far apt as a label than greed which sounds very elegant and courteous.

Now the bishops have declared that a communal action in response to the revelations in the Senate be undertaken. This implies that they now are acting in unison in terms of encouraging the flock to go to the streets and express their opinions whether this administration should continue in power or not. Perhaps, the bishops are now realizing that their willy-nilly stance before regarding this administration did not and never brought out a good result as corruption worsened. Sometime in 2005 they were not united, as some bishops received donations from Malacanang to the tune of half a million during the Catholic Bishops Conference. The receiving bishops outnumbered the number of protesting bishops, so the statement that came out then was