Paradigm for the Happy Life

March 31, 2014 at 2:43pm

This was Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago's speech at the West Visayas State University Commencement Exercises in Iloilo City, 28 March 2014

In my approaching old age, I am now supposed to share with you what life has taught me, and in the end to encapsulate for you what is the meaning of life. From where I am now, I find that these conundrums are easily answered. First, life teaches us that, whether we perceive it as predestined or as random, it is beyond any persons control. Second, there is no template for the meaning of life. Instead, the meaning of life is what you choose to make it mean. In making your choice, when you reach my age, your journey becomes an affirmation of the warning that life is a consequence of our moral choices.

The Problem of Evil

As professionals in a small developing state, you will be living in an environment of poverty and corruption. I will deal separately with poverty and with corruption. For me, these two features constitute the problem of evil. For example, the P10 billion pork barrel scam is definitely a problem of moral evil, as contrasted with supertyphoon Yolanda, which was a natural evil. We can see that human evil can be defined as the suffering which results from morally wrong human choices, specially when the moral wrong is of an extreme kind.[1] It is not difficult to identify the sources of evil in our society. There are many sources, but I will deal with only two.

The first source of evil in Philippine society is self-interest. Every day, many people pursue their selfinterest at the expense of others. However, self-interest becomes a moral evil when selfish politicians make our people suffer in hunger and poverty. Another major source of evil lies in a failure in moral imagination. There are many psychopaths in Congress, but they are unable to imagine the sufferings that they cause on millions of Filipinos who are poor. Let me give you one example.

In the present pork barrel scandal, the most guilty are not only the senators and representatives, but also the executive officers of the so-called implementing agencies, which could be a department, an agency, or a local government unit. Under the Government Procurement Reform Act, the choice of the NGO is subject to competitive bidding or through negotiated procurement. As we are beginning to see in the publicly televised proceedings of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, the problem

arose because the senator or the congressman insisted to the head of the implementing agency that the service or supply contract should be given to the legislators chosen supplier or contractor, from whom the legislator got a kickback of as high as 50%.

The executive officers of many of these implementing agencies, such as the Technology Research Center (TRC), National Agribusiness Corporation (NABCOR), and Muslim Youth Foundation appear to be equally guilty of the crime of plunder or malversation committed by the lawmaker who exerted pressure to give a contract to one specific supplier or contractor. Accordingly, I shall file a resolution for the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to expand the scope of its present inquiry on the pork barrel scam, so as to include executive officers of implementing agencies. These officers should be required to explain the criteria that they applied, in choosing the corrupt NGOs that became the ultimate beneficiaries of the pork barrel.

The implementing agency should never have allowed the corrupt politicians to exert pressure in favor of NGOs. After all, NGOs are supposed to have their own funds from non-governmental sources, such as international donors, international financing institutions, corporate donors, etc. At present, there appears to be no government agency that monitors the flow of public funds to hundreds of NGOs, legitimate or illegitimate. They could be political NGOs, quasi-NGOs (QUANGOs), NGOs run by socialites, or NGOs run by wives of business tycoons. It is the implementing agency who chose the corrupt NGOs. But these implementing agencies were not even created by Congress. Instead, many are subsidiary corporations of existing departments or government-owned corporations created by mere administrative orders or created through the SEC. According to former budget secretary Benjamin Diokno, the proliferation of implementing agencies is highly anomalous, because some of them receive more funds than the legitimately created agencies of government.

We have to act. First, we need to establish the criminal liability of their past and present executives. Then we should recover the misappropriated funds. And then we should throw into jail the liable public officials. After we have accomplished these measures, it follows that the guilty implementing agencies involved in the pork barrel scandal should be abolished or reformed.

How were the NGOs able to capture either the Senate or the conference committee on the budget drawn from the two chambers of Congress? The answer is not so simple. In the past, the COA required government agencies to make a full liquidation of public funds prior to any future releases of

their funding. But in last years budget, the requirement of full liquidation was reduced to merely 70%. Who inserted this corrupt provision? Was it the Senate finance committee, or was it the bicameral conference committee on the budget? In any event, this provision was administratively vetoed by President Aquino, leaving its implementation unclear. This question should be answered by the DBM secretary.

The Problem of Poverty

I use the U.N. definition that poverty is present when the person lives below $1 a day. The U.N. estimates that about 1.2 billion people in the world currently live in poverty, and one-half of those are children. The poor people live generally in sub-Saharan Africa and in South Asia. In 2000, 189 members of the U.N. adopted the Eight Millennium Development Goals designed to alleviate poverty, and improve the quality of life within their borders. During our time it now appears that globalization is a key factor in increasing poverty levels in developing countries. If we do not give ourselves a reality check, industrialization will leave the Philippines out of the global economy. Therefore, each Filipino with a conscience, particularly young graduates with your entire lives before you, must resolve to help reduce poverty in the Philippines. I emphasize to you, as an intelligent audience, that the likelihood of poverty is increased in our country by our poor governance, ethnic conflict, corruption, degradation, and the absence of effective social services.

You and I as individuals share with our government the responsibility for alleviating poverty. In the exercise of your profession, try hard to participate in poverty alleviation programs. Support economic safety nets, demand increased job and credit opportunities, and insist that government should execute programs designed to improve the quality of life, education, and health care.[2]

If you are thinking of joining the brain drain, meaning the outflow of our professional people to higher income countries, I would regret it very much. We all agree that the migrants and the countries that they join represent gains for our national economy. But what happens to the families left behind? Here are key points I want you to toss around in your educated brain:

The Philippines has borne some of the costs of educating you. If you go abroad, our country will lose the tax revenues from your incomes.

If you emigrate, and particularly when you are a teacher, you could be depriving younger Filipinos of your guidance and stimulus. Those who could become your assistants will no longer be able to do so after you depart.

The brain drain poses the problem that people who move out of the country are mostly those who are trained and skilled, leaving behind the unskilled and the semi-unskilled.

If you leave, your departure will impact internal income distribution, because professionals who emigrate imply that they would stay if their salary differentials were raised. If our society gives them higher salaries, they would reinforce the inegalitarian income distribution.

The brain drain is external, because Filipinos leave for abroad. But the brain drain is also internal, because the professionals prefer to practice in the cities and often disregard the needs of rural areas. [3]

The Problem of Corruption

Corruption is a problem as old as planet Earth, and I am not even sure that when our planet dies after four and a half million years, that corruption will die with it. Today we are aware that because corruption appears to be endemic in our society, it is imperative that Philippine society should focus on accountable government and honest political processes.

Let us begin by defining corruption as the abuse of public roles or resources for private benefit. It appears to afflict Filipinos more, the higher they rank in our governmental system. Look at the ongoing investigation into the alleged P10 billion pork barrel scam. It is said to be headed by somebody who is no less than a former Senate president, including a number of senators, and to nobodys surprise it includes dozens upon dozens of representatives. Our corrupt politicians are pre-literate. Although corruption is a threat to core democratic values such as representation and deliberation, the crooks in government do not even know that international organizations have decided to eliminate corruption as an accessible overhead cost of doing

business in a country. Such organizations include: The World Bank; the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; and the Organization of American States.

As a graduate of political science, of law, and of theology, I am passionate in fighting corruption, because corruption is the great evil of Philippine society today. Picture it as a black devil complete with horns, tail, and cloven hooves, which inflicts the following on the poor Filipino people:

Harms economic growth

Discourages foreign investment

Increases bureaucratic delays

Diverts expenditures from social services towards large projects, such as construction, that offer large bribes

Weakens political competition

Preempts popular participation

Enables corrupt officials and/or wealthy clients to exploit both state and people.

The culture of corruption has made prisoners of our people, because of the following factors:

A weak civil society, most recently revealed to be permeated by such corrupt institutions as nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs

Impaired participation, competition, and institutions in politics and economy

Ethnic fragmentation

Poor tax collection

Underpaid civil service

Dependence upon outside investment

Dependence upon extractive industries such as oil or mining

No matter to what profession you belong, it is your civic duty to help stop corruption during your lifetime. Sometime in the near future, we should be capable of designing a national integrity system that should be administered with the same brutality that is practiced by the identifiable crooks in government.[4]

The Happy Life

If we as a united people are able to reduce poverty and corruption to manageable levels, then and only then, would each one of you be able to access the happy life, as defined by the philosophers. After writing a series of textbooks on philosophy, allow me to summarize what I learned from the classic philosophers.

The real definition of happiness is: Any action that promotes the good spirits and lightheartedness of the general public. This action should promote not only your own individual happiness, but also the

happiness of all concerned. The philosophers John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham wrote that happiness is the ultimate aim of all human actions, and therefore happiness is the ultimate standard to judge whether an action is right or wrong.

But even Mill conceded that happiness depends not only on the quantity, but also on the quality of pleasures. Since we are human, we cannot be happy with the mere accumulation of pleasurable sensations. We are made happy not by the lower pleasures, but by the higher pleasures such as the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments.[5]

It is wrong to think that happiness is a series of unrelated experiences. On the contrary, happiness is an ordered whole characterizing an entire life. The road to happiness is the pursuit of specific goals pursuant for their own sake such as knowledge, artistic and cultural activity, or moral goodness. Hence, when you pursue professional success, at the same time strive for these goals, so that your life will be happy.

There are two concepts of happiness. The first concept is hedonistic; it identifies happiness with pleasure. The second concept is eudaimonistic; it identifies happiness as the objective characteristic of a persons life. This kind of happiness arises from the idea of fulfilment and the idea of selfrealization.

Let me leave you with the description of happiness or eudaimonia given by Aristotle, which is what I wish for you above all. May you fulfill your distinctively human potential, by using both practical and theoretical reason throughout your entire life. May you find happiness, meaning your well-being, in the full realization of your human potential, specially in rational activity exhibiting excellence. May you be proud Ilonggos.

Good luck!

ENDNOTES

[1] R. S. Downie, Human Evil, in Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed. 273 (2005). [2] Elizabeth Roletter Purdy, Poverty, in 4 Encyclopedia of Political Science, 1327-29 (2011). [3] Paul Streeten, Brain Drain, in Oxford Companion to Politics of the World, 2nd ed. 83 (2007). [4] Michael Johnston, Corruption, at id., 177-78. [5] Richard Norman, Happiness, in supra, note 1 at 358-59.