EDITORIAL

Fight to weed out graft is everybody’s business

The fight to reduce the level of corruption in the country and in all other countries where graft and corruption is a problem is not the responsibility of the government alone but it rests on the definitive actions of both the leaders of the country and even the ordinary citizens on which depend the ultimate shape of the Philippine future. Ed M. Malay, media relations adviser to former President Fidel V. Ramos, said this was the message of the former President on the commemoration of the 22nd anniversary of the EDSA 1 people power event that restored democracy in the Philippines on Feb. 25, 1986.

He said Ramos was not singling out the Arroyo Administration but said that graft and corruption is a problem around the world, the Philippines included and that there are new tyrannies in the form of self-serving leaders, greedy autocrats, and cliques of corrupt officials that the citizenry must confront.

Malay said Ramos also urged that those in authority should foster the Spirit of EDSA, spread it by word and deed, especially to younger Filipinos which means the government with help from the people themselves must take action to enhance and not diminish our democracy, curb corruption and cronyism, implement poverty alleviation and social reform and, and insure that justice is delivered to the long-suffering and powerless.

Ramos, according to Malay, did not call on the people to stage another people-led uprising but said “history might yet call us to come together again -- to offer our lives and fortunes on the altar of our civic ideals as there are oligarchies, dynasties, and opportunists we are yet to banish from our political and economic life.”

To do this, Malay said Ramos told the Filipino people that the best way to commemorate the Spirit of EDSA and honor the heroes who lie here is for every Filipino to aspire to the same high standard of civic responsibility and that for every citizen to make a difference by joining hands to lift up the common life and raise the country to the position of dignity and esteem the Philippines deserves in the community of nations.

The Spirit of EDSA should remind each and every citizen of the Philippines -- poor or rich, young or old, lowly or elite – that they can make a difference by taking an active role in the country’s political affairs by helping in the management of public affairs since this was a right and equally a duty for every citizen for which each was trained and educated as Ramos cited the Greek cultural tradition which regarded the person who took no part in public affairs as a good-for-nothing citizen.

Ramos said the times of peace and social stability seem to fritter away in view of bickering -- in quarreling like crabs caught in a bamboo trap -- with each one pursuing his or her self-interest. Malay said the former President stressed that if Filipinos were to progress, every Filipino must acknowledge that citizenship must go beyond ties of blood and kinship.

Each one, according to Ramos, must begin to accept that the Filipino nation is more than just an aggregation of individuals or families or clans or elites. The former President may have given mixed signals with his rhetoric but officials in government who are engaged in corruption could see it as a warning that if they don’t change for the better, it could bring about their downfall.