Here and There

Last road to ‘change’ – or perdition

By Gerry Garcia

ADMITTEDLY we’re amazed no end NOT at the allegedly astonishing level to which corruption in government has risen today. . . but at the complaints and squawks stirred. These have been many and so nauseatingly repetitious like a broken record while corruption continues, apparently unabated.

General consensus has been, up to now, that there is a goldmine in government which can be had for the taking by anybody with money and kapal muks enough to land him or her in any finance-oriented government post. That’s why some positions, like Customs or Internal Revenue, etc., are drawing applicants like flies. In our free-wheeling type of democracy, ala-Pinoy, anybody can run for President or Vice or Senator. Ultimate end is not public service. It’s pocket service.

Ever wondered why some public projects are never started or finished because of lack of funds?

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There have been attempts, it’s true, by government to pare down or diminish corruption in government, like conducting probes on suspected officials’ lifestyles and dishing out corresponding penalties. So far it has been a roaring success in the former stage 4 but grossly disappointing in the latter one. What happened to the cases of the two Garcias (from the AFP and the GSIS) who failed miserably in the government’s lifestyles checks?

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Very recently two Social Security System (SSS) officials were found by the Ombudsman to be living on easy street, meaning, the two officials have allegedly been collecting their retirement pensions from the agency even though they are still employed. SSS president Corazon dela Paz and SSS vice president for the NCR Region Aurora Ortega were said to have taken advantage of their position to apply for retirement pension . . . and collected the same even when they are still employed by the agency.

What we find downright flabbergasting is the gossip on the side that the two SSS executives involved are presently recipients of monthly salaries more than thrice the average pension of an SSS retiree.

An aging SSS retiree we know, now past 80, is now working himself to the bone because the month pension he gets is less than P3,000, hardly enough to buy food for himself and his two katulong (helpers).

He had been a member of the SSS since the agency’s inception in the late fifties and up to now the distance between himself and his meager pension is sky-high. The increase last granted his pension was made more than a decade ago.

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The decades are countless since we began wishing for a change in the form of our government to something better, where we could get a better deal. . . and a chance to live a less worried life in our twilight years.

Probably the one and only last chance we could get at the moment is to push for Cha-cha … in spite of the ceaseless yakking coming from the pea-brained overgrown minors in Congress . . . and their hakot rallyists on Mendiola.

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