Opinion
Posted on November 23, 2011 08:57:11 PM
Demanding justice
Strategic Perspective |
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When an American writer charged Filipinos with having “a damaged culture,” it clearly implied that he thought he represented a superior one. He may or may not have changed his mind since, but the predatory behavior and moral excesses of America’s economic elite “in cozy, corrupt cahoots with the government” suggest that there is nothing fundamentally different between their culture and ours. What differences there are is the result only of the fact that America has already managed to develop a justice system that works better than ours.
No doubt, ours is a dysfunctional culture characterized by some rather perverse incentives. Compared, however, to the US and other developed Western societies, ours is simply at an earlier stage of evolution. Greed, corruption, and plunder also characterized those older free-market democracies not very long ago; today, the same characteristics are only submerged and disguised and somewhat mitigated by the effectiveness of their legal restraints. I have long believed that the emergence of any particular societal institution occurs only when conditions create a strong enough demand for it. As a case in point, our version of a justice and law enforcement system is the way it is because we (the people) have not hitherto made a strong enough demand for one that actually works.
One would have thought that the horrendous Maguindanao massacre -- wherein 58 men and women (including 33 journalists) were senselessly slaughtered in a warped effort to mark political territory with blood instead of urine -- would have been the trigger that would finally lead the Filipino people to strongly demand a justice system that actually dispenses justice. That hope might have been misplaced. Two years after that terrible atrocity -- yesterday was its 2nd anniversary -- only 95 of the 195 accused have been arrested, only 72 have been arraigned, and only two are being tried. Moreover, the glacial pace of the trial of two of the principal accused virtually ensures that we may be well into the next decade before the trial ever ends. The problem, as a relative of one of the victims correctly worried, is that the public’s memory, and thus its anger, may not last long enough to insist that justice be done. Perhaps that is actually the objective, and our flawed legal system will, tragically, permit that to happen.
Thus, the speed recently demonstrated by the present administration in connection with the prosecution of ex-President Arroyo for electoral sabotage raises anew the hope that this marks the beginning of a serious attempt at reforming our erratic and ineffective justice system. For some strange reason, however, administration officials are now being forced by certain misguided sectors of society to justify the swiftness of the actions taken to prevent Mrs. Arroyo from fleeing the country. Investigating officials and prosecutors are now perversely being made to explain why this did not constitute “undue haste” and why they did not act more slowly. Huh? Granted, swift legal action must ideally be applied in all cases -- and not just in one special case involving the former president -- but reforming the justice system must start somewhere and an important case involving the subversion of our democracy by the (then) highest official in the land is an excellent place to start (though I would have preferred to start change of this kind two years ago with the Maguindanao massacre).
Although it remains to be seen whether the reform effort is indeed serious, President Aquino is absolutely right in saying, “The core principle of this reform program is this -- the guilty should be made accountable because if not, it would like we have kept the door open for anyone who would want to abuse our people... We are all working for a new Philippines, one where there is equality, where whoever does wrong, whatever his status in life may be, is punished, a country where justice rules.” Hallelujah. Perhaps now justice can also be finally served in the half-century-old Hacienda Luisita case as well as in the one-year-old case of (alleged) electronic fraud in the May 2010 elections.
Responding to a thoughtful comment from a friend (a distinguished academic) that flaws in the Filipino “mind-set” might be traced to shortcomings in Philippine educational and cultural institutions, I pointed out that behavior is, to begin with, a product of our (man’s) evolutionary past, a past wherein the dominant values celebrated predatory plunder and led to what Veblen famously called “invidious comparison” and “pecuniary emulation.” I then suggested that societies where greed and corruption and plunder are notably less obvious or flagrant or brazen are that way only because those societies have somehow already managed -- typically as a result of historical accidents -- to develop a system of restraints that actually constrain certain behaviors or require them to be masked. The values that members of a society exhibit will obviously be those that are consistent with the structure of incentives that determine which of the society’s members thrive and prosper.
Definitely, the role of other societal institutions like the educational system and art and religion in shaping societal values and norms of behavior cannot be neglected. Notwithstanding how well these institutions play their role, however, our society’s flawed value system -- our “damaged culture” -- will not change until we, as a people, are able to install a justice and law enforcement system that corrects distorted incentives and directs everyone toward morally desirable behaviors. Let us therefore hope that the demand for such a system will finally build up to the required strength for this to be irresistible. Hope always springs eternal....
