Where'd all the good people go?

Oh, you are going to love Jack Johnson’s Good People Lyrics. It fits our situation today. It puts music to the question that we have been asking for quite a time: Where’d all the good people go?

Senator Jinggoy Estrada’s revelation that he and the other senators who convicted former Chief Justice Renato Corona received an additional P50 million pesos pork barrel says it all. Proof of bribery is not necessary. There is no accusation in the revelation. The only thing essential is the fact that millions of money had changed hands after that crucial decision which altered the history of the Philippine judiciary.

Of course the disclosure was made after Senator Estrada was tagged in the pork-barrel scam. Indeed, the pork-barrel scam has dragged politicians out in the open. Like the mythical Pandora’s Box, the Napoles Affair is letting out undisclosed ills afflicting politicians in high places. It has rocked the Palace and the Chambers of High Politicians. Finger-pointing has started. Former allies and secret enemies have started to trade accusations. The mess is spilling the blood of the good and the not-so good in high places.

With accusations and mudslinging filling the air, it has become inevitable to ask: Where’d all the good people go?

Well, there are still good people in the government. They inhabit the modest positions, and even high ones. Sure thing is: good people are there but their presence could hardly be felt during these times.

Recent events make us wonder whether the existing political system encourages people to stay good or to cater to their evil side. Is our brand of democracy consistent with the idea that public power should be entrusted to good people because of their inherent capability for goodness?  

Societies prefer liberal democracy on the belief that it gives people opportunities to maximize the good things that they can do. But what happens when the system designed to maximize this capacity for goodness becomes an impetus for evil deeds and corruption?

The word “democracy” did not come from the masses. Philosophers described the concept but it was politicians who gave birth to the term. There could be no debate on this. Labelling ideas is a prerogative which politicians enjoy since time immemorial. Philosophers may explain facts and phenomena but the power of labels always belong to politicians who craft public policies. Democracy, especially in its liberal form, has come down in history as the most politician-friendly political system.

There was once a notion that the best of people are needed to make a dysfunctional government work. This belief seems inapplicable to our case. Repeated failures at governance show that no human talent can unmake the mess that our dysfunctional liberal democracy has created. Worse, our dysfunctional liberal democratic system has given rise to a terrible monster—a bureaucracy that eats up the good in people and exhausts the energy and idealism of the young.

Because of this, good people have developed an aversion towards politics and governance. Philippine politics is so bad that it turns good people to evil. It has become a sure road to perdition. It continues to scare good people away. Critics have even labelled the government as the biggest criminal syndicate in history. We should not wonder then if one day, fiction writers would dub the ruling political administration as a minion from hell. This would hurt of course but truly, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.  

So where’d all the good people go?

Well, there are still many of them around us. However, to see more of them in politics and governance, there is a need to change the system which seduces people to turn to the dark side.