I was pushing a grocery cart back to the designated cart return area of the parking lot of the mall last Sunday when I noticed that my cart was the first one to be returned properly, and looking around, saw a number of carts scattered randomly throughout the parking lot.
I have discussed this topic before, of how Filipinos cannot seem to grasp the concept of clean-as-you-go, which includes cleaning up after yourself in a fast food restaurant, or returning grocery carts to designated areas after use, but this time it struck me that we are a people who want to wage a war against corruption in this nation, and yet we cannot even CLAYGO.
That thought struck me as funny and I laughed out loud, alone in the middle of a parking lot that was baking under the noontime sun.
But if you come to think of it, how can we expect our countrymen who cannot even get the little things right to get the big things done? Corruption among our public officials grew to the monster it is now largely due to our apathy and selfishness, and now that it has been exposed and has become the talk of the town, we have become so hopping mad that we suddenly want corruption to go away.
However, if you notice, we want corruption to go away but it has to magically go away, the way the shopping carts that we leave behind and our fast food trays are expected to disappear when we leave them behind after we are done with our thing. We want results but it’s never our job to do something extra because we are a bunch of lazy and spoiled people who believe that such things are not our job, but someone else’s.
We want corruption to go away but are not willing to join rallies against it and are even annoyed when we get stuck in traffic because of an anti-corruption rally.
We want better public officials but don’t bother to do any research when voting and just vote the usual people and their dynasties back into power. We want a better nation but we have long accepted vote buying as a fact of life and one of the ways we can get a “tax rebate”.
Government officials and employees say that not all of them are involved in corruption, and that there are ‘good’ people in government, but despite knowing what is happening, they keep silent and simply avert their eyes from the rot and the stink that they work with. The reality is that in this country, whistle blowers are as rare as people who can do CLAYGO.
Corruption is so deeply entrenched in our government that talking about it over the dinner table, complaining about it, or wishing it away won’t be enough. There is no anti-corruption service crew that knows how to get rid of it the way they magically appear to take away the tray or cart that we cannot be bothered to put away properly. If our country is going to have a corruption-free (or corruption-less) government, it is going to require a lot of political will and determination, especially if we are to ensure that all the corrupt are weeded out, and the purge is not just selective, targeting only the enemies of the current administration. We the people may not be directly involved in this work, but if we don’t keep our eye on the ball and the pressure on the government, this anti-corruption themed chapter of our history will just be another footnote that resulted in absolutely nothing, after all the supposed fire and fury.
In a nation where the people are generally too lazy to return a grocery cart, it is hard to be optimistic when it comes to our chances of defeating an evil monster that has become as great as corruption.
Maybe before we start imagining that we can slay dragons, we should start small by trying to be more deliberate and consistent when it comes to practicing CLAYGO in our lives. If you come to think of it, even the corrupt might be afraid of us if they know that we are capable of being serious about something, instead of being the “resilient”, tolerant, lazy, forgetful, and easily distracted voters that they can count on to let them off the hook once the anger has subsided or we find our next shiny new thing to obsess over.*
