The suggestion to turn to snap elections for all elected officials who are willing to step down is not the solution to the country’s problems for so many reasons.
First of all, the “idea” of Senator Alan Peter Cayetano is useless because there is no way that any Filipino elected official will voluntarily step down, especially without a legal order. If the senators and congressmen who have already been named by DPWH officials in the senate investigation won’t even consider resignation, why should the hundreds, if not thousands other elected officials step down if they haven’t even been accused of anything yet, even if the investigation is one that is “in aid of legislation”?
Unless Cayetano takes the lead and voluntarily relinquishes his seat, in order to show that he is really sincere in his desire to ‘renew’ the nation’s leadership and purge it of the corrupt, his suggestion is just lip service. Coming from a guy who claimed to sign a bank waiver that turned out to be only a tarp but not a legal and actionable document, it’s tough to imagine him following through on this particularly half-baked challenge.
As much as our corrupted, inefficient, and political dynasty ridden government desperately needs a reset or reboot, at this point of time, calling for a snap elections, or even the theoretical bombing of the House of Representatives during a SONA, when almost all government officials would be in attendance, cannot be a solution to our nation’s deep-seated problems.
That is because our problems are rooted in the people that are in power, the people that work for those people, and the system that allows them to get away with so much corruption that learning about a part of their racket already makes us want to puke.
Even if everyone resigns and snap elections are held, it will still be the mostly corrupt and low quality public servants and politicians who come from political dynasties that will end up rotating in to replace their fallen comrades. Those in power are just part of the problem. The bigger problem is that those who are waiting to replace them are just as greedy and corrupt, the system that is still in place is optimized for those kinds of public officials, as the checks and balances that are supposed to prevent such corruption remain dismantled and neutered.
If you come to think of it, how many months has it been since the DPWH flood control bombshell was dropped, with matching Senate investigation, yet nobody has been charged or arrested. After all that drama and barking, all those people marching on the streets on September 21, yet nobody has been bitten. A small fish like Bryce Hernandez and his ilk will probably fry, but the big fish will just keep swimming.
More than stupid snap elections, what this country needs are things that Senators would actually be afraid of. One would be the anti-political dynasty law that no lawmaker seems to want to talk about, even if it has been a requirement of the 1986 Constitution. Another would be a more comprehensive SALN, complete with tracking system and built-in bank waivers for all public officials and their immediate family and business partners.
We also need to institutionalize a better system for appointing critical gatekeepers like the Ombudsman, Commission on Audit, and other government agencies designed to prevent and prosecute corruption, in order to ensure those officials are not protectors of politicians but will protect the interests of the Filipino people, first and foremost. The justice system has also shown us that it needs more will and teeth if it is going to be an effective tool in the fight against graft and corruption.
In other words, we need a government that has been designed and upgraded to be one that discourages, prevents, and prosecutes with extreme prejudice all forms of corruption, from the lowest government employee all the way to the Chief Executive. Those who are thinking of engaging in corruption have to fear the system that shouldn’t be compromised easily by bribing the right person, or exploiting the right loophole.
The thing is, we have so much experience with corruption, even if we just sample the time between the Marcos presidents, the Papa and the Baby. However, if you come to think of it, the only ones who have learned and adapted from those many lessons are the corrupt, while despite its acquired knowledge and experience, our government has chosen to be left behind, primarily our own officials haven’t been plugging the holes or adding the teeth wherever new methods for corruption are discovered. We have simply been letting the corrupt get away with it, and then every single time, continue to leave the door to the national coffers ajar. If that is not deliberately malicious governance, I don’t know what to call it anymore.
Corruption is a deeply-rooted, endemic, cultural, institutional, and persistent problem that snap elections cannot solve. Our leaders, if they are sincere this time, have to do much better than just another round of lip service and selective persecution.*
