LuisTeodoro.com

THE incoming government of Benigno Aquino III is being greeted with a level of optimism that includes the hope that it will seriously address Philippine poverty by, among other policy options, putting in place an authentic land reform program to abolish the archaic land tenancy system. But its coming to power in the wake of the disastrous watch of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo also presents it with the opportunity to address, mitigate, and possibly end the culture of impunity.

“Impunity” refers to the exemption from punishment of the killers of journalists and media workers, human rights and political activists, lawyers, even local officials and judges. A weak justice system is often blamed for impunity. At the community level that weakness is manifest in the collusion between hired killers, local officials, and police and military officers, or even in the killers themselves’ being police and military personnel, or assassins in the pay of local officials.

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PRESIDENT-elect Benigno Aquino III ran his campaign on the slogan “None Poor Without Corruption” ( Walang Mahirap Kung Walang Corrupt). His platform of governance not only emphasizes the same theme. The same platform also links corruption to mass despair, apathy and cynicism.

That document (http://www.malayanghalalan.com) declares that “We have lost trust in the democratic institutions we so courageously re-established after the dictatorship. Our proven capacity for collective outrage and righteous resistance has been weakened. We have ceased to depend on the patriotism and civic engagement that used to animate many of our efforts.

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ALTHOUGH he went out of his way to deny it, acting Justice Secretary Alberto Agra would not have reversed himself without the media and public outrage provoked by his April 16 resolution.

That resolution found no probable cause for the inclusion of two members of the Ampatuan clan in the multiple murder charges arising from the November 23, 2009 Maguindanao Massacre in which 57 men and women including 32 journalists and media workers were killed.

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Contrary to Acting Justice Secretary Alberto Agra’s delusion that he’s the most hated person in the Philippines, he isn’t. It’s not because he doesn’t qualify. It’s because there are literally hundreds of other candidates for that title, most of whom are in the same government that he serves, among them other Cabinet members, certain congressmen, governors and mayors, police and military generals, and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

The most colorful epithets are in fact reserved for the latter by businessmen and professionals — and even by her former economics adviser, Albay Governor Joey Salceda, who once called her “a lucky bitch” in public. (God knows what he calls her in private.) And that’s only at the highest levels of government. Imagine how many other people responsible for their suffering — landlords, usurers, MMDA traffic enforcers, policemen — common folk must also resent.

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Instead of turning a bad thing into a good thing, acting Justice Secretary Alberto Agra did exactly the opposite: he turned what was already a bad thing into something worse.

From the way he keeps smiling at the cameras, he looks as if he’s gained something from the whole wretched mess. But it’s certainly not the improvement of his public image or that of the government he serves. The widespread public cynicism over the capacity of the so-called justice system to do justice to those who’ve been aggrieved, as expressed in various ways by those familiar with the role of the Ampatuans in the so-called victory of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2004 and of her candidates for the Senate in 2007, is now universal. (The results of a survey on which government agency the public trusts the least should be interesting. )

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By common agreement, except among those in the dirty tactics departments of the groups behind the leading candidates for the presidency who think of it as just doing a job, the 2010 election campaign is turning ugly. With a little more than three weeks to go, however, it’s likely that the use of such tactics as leaking false “psychiatric reports” and circulating rumors of varying degrees of outrageousness has not reached the “historic lows” some analysts have observed in these elections.

Smear campaigns, mudslinging, muckraking and similar tactics are the staple of all Philippine elections, together with violence, intimidation, bribery and fraud.

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The current (and seemingly worsening) power crisis and what it could mean to the May elections, among the possibilities being that of a nation wide shut-down of the machines being put in place for the first ever automated polls.

The possible granting of emergency powers to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to address the power shortage in Mindanao. Questions over Arroyo’s last-minute appointments in the military and the executive branch. Her literally hundreds of “midnight” appointments to various positions, from ambassadors to bureau underlings.

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