Malicious or grotesque

GLIMPSES
By Jose Ma Montelibano

This is the public reality. A Benhur Luy claimed he was kidnapped and, through his family, requested the NBI to rescue him. The NBI did, and the drama does not end, it just begins.

Benhur then tells a story of unimaginable greed and political arrogance. Quickly, from storyteller, Benhur transforms to being a whistleblower. If Benhur were an actor, he has had a genius of a director. The case that is now most celebrated simmered before it burst into a conflagration. In fact, a TV show seemed friendly to Janet Napoles and attempted to show she had business dealings in Indonesia – maybe to prove where she got her money.

Anyway, that is now mostly water under the bridge. After the key points of Benhur’s serial unfolded, if true, explains why he had to talk. He must know he is a dead man walking without government protection. And that protection at the level Benhur needs it would not have been given if he, and other whistleblowers who followed, did not have that truckload of documents to back up their affidavits.

The Filipino people have been regaled with a scandal that involved senators and congressmen – and fake NGOs. According to Benhur and a growing number of whistleblowers, the scheme to steal people’s money needed conduits which would appear as recipients of the funds. But special conduits were needed because the money, after being released by the Dept. of Budget Management, had to be returned as kickbacks. Fake NGOs are naturally easier to deal with than real NGOs, especially where dirty money is concerned.

When the public began to show its anger at the way senators and congressmen, as alleged by whistleblowers to have connived with Napoles through fake NGOs, a strange announcement, more like an indictment, was uttered by a senator. Like a rabbit from a magician’s hat, NGOs were banned entities worthy of support from Congress. Of course, I found it strange. It defied logic. Unless one puts malice in the decision. Or Congress has an IQ that can be grotesque when confronted that some of its members are accused of graft or plunder.

How can disqualifying real NGOs not be malicious or grotesque? If there is malice, shifting the focus of public perception from the guilt of senators and congressmen to the guilt of NGOs, even if these are fake, is logical. Ugly, immoral, but logical.

Or, if Congress, and Congress here means both the Senate and the House of Representatives, subscribes to the grotesque as acceptable behavior, then banning the innocent to mitigate the crime of the guilty becomes logical. Ugly, immoral, but logical.

Just how grotesque is amplified by the post-Yolanda relief effort. The performance of government has been under fire – valid or not. It has the power, the resources, the food, mountains of it, in fact, but it does not reap the goodwill. With very much less, NGOs do. Armed mostly with just heart and nobility, this sector we call non-government, all of whom, by the way, are the bosses of government according to our President, are swarming all over affected areas they can reach. The hungry and cold among the victims are grateful to them, praise and thank them, and will forever be etched in their memory. With just so little food or medicine to give.

In contrast, a government with money and food flowing out of its ears, plus billions more from foreign donors, gets a backlash for not going fast enough, not giving what sits in warehouses, and not looking at NGOs are capable enough to be their co-workers in an emergency. That is grotesque, when government distrusts its own bosses for no good reason except to deflect the wrongdoing of some if its own senior officials. That is malicious, when the guilty penalize the innocent to escape their own culpability.

Typhoon Yolanda did not inflict a wound on the areas she devastated, she inflicted a collective wound. The Filipino people are one body even when we disagree among ourselves. A national wound deserves a national response, not from DILG, not from DSWD, but from as many Filipinos as possible. And Filipinos worldwide responded, passionately, aggressively, raising awareness, raising sympathy, raising resources. And many more were not content with that and went to ground zero in Leyte, in Samar, in Cebu, in Negros, in Iloilo, in Capiz, in Antique, in Aklan, in Palawan.

Everybody felt the wound, and everybody wanted to heal the wound. Except the government agencies most involved with the relief. Somehow, they want to do it by themselves, as though they can, as though all the resources of the people belonged only to them, as though NGOs on the ground would steal them like some senators and congressmen, in connivance with several government agencies, as alleged by whistleblowers and now as charged by the Department of Justice.

There is a long road ahead, and a whole world watches. After all, the whole world is giving to the Philippines, not because it loves government, but because it is concerned about the Filipino people. That global attention brought in all the foreign aid and donations. it can also bring in the world’s admiration, or scorn.

The internal conflict called politics is rearing its ugly head in a humanitarian disaster. In the field of operations, many players are performing in a global stage to a global audience. If at the height of the relief work, domestic intramurals found coverage in domestic media, more of the same will find its way to international media and every private report of every foreign donor. Even today, technology allows every hungry barrio inside any ground zero to send a text message to family and friends around the world.

The challenge is for government and people to rise from tragedy instead of going deeper into it. The challenge is how to work together, not against each other. This is our moment, government and people, to find solidarity in our nobility. We cannot afford otherwise.