First word
WHILE idly contemplating the pictures, images, exploits and personal history of fugitive politician Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co, it suddenly dawned on me that the man, although he also carries a Filipino passport and resides presumably on our native soil, is totally alien to us, almost like a creature from outer space.
In birth circumstances, educational background, milieu, and upbringing and political career, he appears to bear nothing in common with most Filipinos. He may possess all the usual proofs of identity. But in his career as a politician and businessman, and financial circumstances, he stands way above most or all of us. I could live to be 100 years or more, but I will not see in this life P800 million in cash delivered to my residence as my share from a crooked enterprise.
In highlighting Mr. Co’s alienation from the native grain, I do not refer here to his sinitic antecedents. He is alien to us not because he is Chinese in ethnic background, but because he does not appear to share with us our national life and identity.
To inflict the harm that Zaldy Co has done on our people and our country, one has to be really athwart with the life of our people and our country, our future, our history, our hopes and purposes.
The management teacher, statesman and writer John W. Gardner, author of the highly praised book “On Leadership” (The Free Press, New York,1990), wrote: “A nation or civilization is a drama lived in the minds of a people. It is a shared vision, it is shared norms, expectations and purposes. When one thinks of the world’s great civilizations, the most vivid images that crowd in on us are apt to be the physical monuments left behind — the Pyramids, the Parthenon, the Mayan temples. The civilizations themselves from beginning to end existed in the minds of men and women. If we look at ordinary human communities, we see the same reality: a community lives in the minds of its members — in shared assumptions, beliefs, customs, ideas that give meaning, ideas that motivate. And among the ideas are norms or values. In any healthy reasonably coherent community, people come to have shared views concerning right or wrong, better and worse in personal conduct in governing, in art, whatever. They define for the time and place what things are legal or illegal, virtuous or vicious, good taste or bad.”
By his conduct in public office and his acts of sabotage of the national interest and public welfare, Zaldy Co clearly did not share the hopes and purposes of our country and our people. As chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, he did not consider any item in the national budget as sacrosanct, as above looting for personal purposes. He gave the party-list system a black eye in our constitutional order. He is unworthy of sharing in the good name of our country and people. Let other countries and other people claim him as one of their own.
yenmakabenta@gmail.com
