University of the Philippines Professor Clarita Carlos wrote on her webpage an enigmatic and open-ended post: “We continue to COMPROMISE our institutions and soon we shall be on a slippery slope to you know where… tragic!”

My repartee: “a failed state.”  

Space is limited on Facebook. Actually, there was a predicate to my curt reply to Professor Claire.  

We have been a helpless audience to a scene of lurid and insatiable greed, of wealth and power being depicted by dramatis personae playing their roles in accordance with the script that each have acted out, and in acting they have their deliverance from prosecution and a delivery of cash in accordance to their worth. Everything we witness is in living color.

Our country did not fall into kleptocracy overnight. It was a slow, deliberate shift — from a republic where public office was a trust to a marketplace where power is bartered and sold.

The metamorphosis is grotesque. The upper and lower chambers of the Legislature have become obscene places where independence and dignity are traded for liberty from charges and expulsion, plus the bonus of an ample share of kickbacks derived from ghost projects and budget insertions unheard of in the annals of Philippine history. 

Malacañang and the Speaker of the House unabashedly treat the national budget not as taxpayer money but as their own war chest. Billions flow to “aid,” “projects,” and “assistance” right before elections, before impeachment votes, before crucial legislation. 

The objective is clear: to purchase loyalty by hook or by crook. The message to every mayor, governor, and legislator is simple — toe the line and the funds will come. Question the line and your district goes dry — like what happened to Davao City. But the city survived because of the trust of investors and taxpayers in the local leadership.

Senators and congressmen have prostituted themselves. Accountability and prison terms are the threats, and compliance is the currency that buys freedom. Cases stall. Those who defy, like Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, are consigned to the calaboose. Investigations are defunded. 

Hearings turn into theater. In exchange for votes that shield those in the highest echelons of power and protect their allies, they receive what Judas got: 30 pieces of silver, plus the promise they will not be next in line for prosecution. Only this time it comes in branded suitcases. In the Senate, the most vulnerable of them all shamelessly follow the command.

And why does the Supreme Court idly watch the conflict and power grab in the Senate leadership even as it has reached the point where this affects the realm of justice itself? When the highest court refuses to draw the line on institutional abuse, it tells every politician that the Constitution is negotiable if you have enough votes to buy it.

Forget what we have been taught in school that in a democracy there are checks and balances. These days it is called transactional. In a democracy the Chief Executive and the legislators are supposed to serve the people. In a kleptocracy, it is the other way around. 

In effect when public funds are the payment, every taxpayer becomes an involuntary investor in his own disenfranchisement, misery and doom.

The Senate Hall, the Batasang Pambansa, the Palace by the River Pasig still stand. But the spirit is gone. The buildings are still there but the values enshrined in these institutions are now openly peddled.

In all this, what remains unsullied is the Supreme Court. However, I keep wondering why in the impasse that has paralyzed the Senate, how come the High Court has not come out with a legal doctrine, instead it allows the stalemate in the Senate and the public confusion to pervade?