The wisdom of Jinggoy Estrada

“I believe that we all here are victims of a flawed system which is so ingrained that it has been institutionalized,” declared Senator Jinggoy Estrada in his privilege speech last September 25.

 

Estrada was bemoaning the unfair treatment he got from the Commission on Audit and the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee. He laments not only the audit report’s selectivity in identifying questionable public officials but also the “hypocrites in barong” who have passed judgments on him.

 

For citizens like me who have always been skeptical of the Estrada dynasty’s political maneuvers, it is easy to dismiss this statement as a cop-out – nothing but a “distraction” from “the real issue” of the Napoles mafia.

 

But as a student of sociology, I have also learned not to dismiss ideas just because I dislike the personalities behind them.

 

The banality of evil

 

I do find relevance in Estrada’s claim about the role of a flawed system in shaping people’s actions. These days, it has been common for cases of corruption to focus on personalities – to frame the issue as one of good versus evil. Those who commit corrupt acts are political actors with a weak moral compass while those who remain clean are people with integrity, hence deserving of the people’s trust.

 

Malacañang has always used this defense. They insist that the President’s men are upright people with good intentions who can handle the disbursement of discretionary funds with integrity. Their predecessors, on the contrary, are the morally compromised ones, the rotten apples that have spoiled the political process.

 

There may be good reasons to believe that Malacañang is occupied by decent and well-meaning people. However, if there is one thing that the history of human wickedness has taught us, it is what political theorist Hannah Arendt calls the fearsome and thought-defying “banality of evil.”

 

Arendt made this statement in relation to her observation of Otto Adolf Eichmann – one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. Arendt argues that Eichmann cannot be simply described as an evil man who did evil deeds. Eichmann was rather bland and ordinary, making it particularly troubling why average people can turn into criminals.

 

Normalization of moral compromise

 

While Arendt cautions that her argument is limited to Eichmann’s case, one valuable lesson remains relevant today: that when a system is designed for people to be short of empathy and vulnerable to traps of treachery, it becomes normal to cheat, steal, lie and tolerate those who do. The state can maintain structures that enable even the most conscientious political actors to commit unethical acts without considering themselves morally bankrupt. The scary thing is it can happen to anyone.

 

This is why it is not uncommon to hear testimonies of friends and relatives of those implicated in scandals to express shock that the person they thought they knew could commit such acts. Personalities implicated in the PDAF and other corruption-related scandals may be the most caring parents and compassionate friends. But when they are placed in a context where systems of controls and accountability are weak or when it has become common practice to dismiss someone as a troublemaker for wanting to change the system, “doing the right thing” becomes almost impossible.

 

Misconduct as mundane

 

Benhur Luy and other whistleblowers are apt examples. In their testimonies in Senate hearings, I get the impression that they are typical employees who describe their work as if they were engaged in normal business transactions. Their narrations give a sense of familiarity with usual practices at work – from giving monikers to clients (sexy, tanda and pogi) to keeping records of transactions with government agencies. Luy and his peers did not appear like cold-blooded scammers. Luy giggled frequently and found humor in the absurdity of his job as personal assistant to Madam Janet. A news report described him as “cool, unflappable, [and] spontaneous.”

 

This is precisely how the normalization of corruption looks like. People are socialized to think that what they do is not a big deal. They have come up with a standard operating procedure that makes their misconducts mundane. They end up blasé, unable to make connections between their personal gains to their fellow citizens’ losses.

 

I could only surmise that the same procedure happens in top level governance in the executive, where the day-to-day tasks of dispensing pork, realigning budgets and designing disbursement acceleration schemes appear routine. People may rely on their track record of integrity and good intentions but without a system setup to fight the banality of evil – to have large discretion without freedom of information – it is easy for ethical practice to deteriorate, to get out of touch with popular opinion and, eventually, defend the indefensible. 

 

PR offensive is not enough

 

Indeed, there is some wisdom in Estrada’s statement. The sheer lack of institutionalized transparency and the culture of impunity with corruption-related scandals can only embolden criminals in Louis Vuitton to plunder the national coffers on a more brazen and massive scale. This is precisely the reason why the system of pork and patronage needs a major overhaul as expressed by public clamor, not a public relations offensive which defends discretionary funds as one that “saved the country” because they were “spent correctly.” - GMA News

 

 

Nicole Curato is a sociologist. She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Deliberative Democracy & Global Governance at the Australian National University. Prior to her fellowship, she was an Assistant Professor of Sociology in UP Diliman. She is also the Associate Editor of The Manila Review.