President Noynoy Aquino’s State-of-the-Nation Address gave us the sorry state of government executives appropriating money for themselves way beyond reasonable compensation. Many of these people did not feel they were stealing.

This was compensation for something that they have done for the government or for those running the government. As a sergeant pointed out, if his general was on the take why should he not indulge in it, perhaps on a lesser scale? At one time these islands were called “Ladrones” isles since many big ships that came suffered some form of thievery. The thieves probably justified their actions because these foreign ships were unwanted and were stealing from them on a larger scale. They did not identify with the ships. A study of the triad gangs of San Francisco showed that although they stole from everybody, they did not steal from each other. They were one community. It is probably this lack of identity or communality that our wayward civil servants experience. The stolen money is not from my community with which I indentify. Stealing from the public coffers may even be commendable. It is not ours. Identification with the larger community is what makes a nation.

The bad example of those higher up justifies the thievery all down the line. So what if the government coffers suffer or get depleted. Any way it is not ours. Some linkage may be made to colonial administration. To steal from the colonizers was part of the revolution. The people did not identify with the government. If you consider that government resources as belonging to us, to the community to which I belong and identify with, then stealing from it would be a serious crime. But if I do not identify with that community or its government, then I can justify taking what is not due me from that resource. We are a young nation and identity with the central government is at most feeble.

To play cops and robbers will not work. We cannot watch every civil servant and prosecute him if he misbehaves. Even if our justice system worked, which most of the time it does not, it will not do. Then we might as well give up? But there is a better way, which is to encourage identification with the community. This is ours. It is not necessarily patriotism. It is simple identity. Ako ay Pilipino. Atin ito. This is nation building, the identification with the Filipino community. We cannot count on racial identity even though we are heavily Malay. We are a mixture of many other races. We are not as diverse as the USA and race is not what keeps us together or the reason for our identity.

It is an intellectual acceptance of communality of a people under a Constitution mandating democracy, set in a geographical location, with a particular history. This identity has been encrusted with emotion, suffering, and pride through recent history.

To solve our problem, we need to indentify with the community called Philippines, whose welfare and progress is my concern. Beyond this the only other thing is to acknowledge a spiritual world and a next world where we would be taken to task for our actions. Objectives set by President Noynoy of eradicating poverty and minimizing corruption are senseless if we do not belong to a nation. We need to go deeper than to play cops and robbers. We need to inculcate identity with a community called Filipino, and to promote consciousness of a Father who sees all and loves us. The only return we can make for his gifts is to do good to our neighbor whom He loves. We cannot do anything for Him directly for He has everything except our acceptance and love. Then we can work for elimination of poverty and minimizing corruption in a nation we are proud of. <emeterio_barcelon@yahoo.com>