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 is a predicate to my curt reply to Professor Claire.

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

Our country did not become a 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 was grotesque. The upper and lower chambers of the legislative branch have become obscene places where independence and dignity are traded for immunity from charges and expulsion, with the added bonus of an ample share of kickbacks from ghost projects and budget insertions unheard of in the annals of Philippine history.

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

The objective was clear — to purchase loyalty by hook or by crook. The message to every mayor, governor and legislator was simple: toe the line and the funds will come. Question the line and your district goes dry like what had happened to Davao City.

But the city survived because investors and taxpayers trusted 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 allies, they receive what Judas got: 30 pieces of silver, plus the promise that 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 it affects the realm of justice itself? When the highest court refuses to draw the line on institutional abuse, it teaches every politician that the Constitution is negotiable if you have enough money to buy it.

Forget what we have been taught in school that in a democracy there are checks and balances. These days they are called transactions.

In a democracy, the Chief Executive and the legislators serve the people. In a kleptocracy, it is the other way around. In effect, when public funds are the collateral, every Filipino taxpayer becomes an involuntary investor in his own disenfranchisement, misery and doom.

The Senate, the Batasang Pambansa, and 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. I keep wondering why, however, in the impasse that has paralyzed the Senate today, the High Court has not issued a legal doctrine but has allowed the stalemate in the chamber and the confusion of the public to persist.