Social contract

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Next big leaps

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Noynoy!

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2009

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Tuloy ang Laban!

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Mourning for Cory, Morning for Country

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This is something we direly lack and which we desperately need in the country: leaders who own up to their transgressions, who allow the processes seeking transparency and accountability to take their course without fear or favor.

LONDON – Climate change meetings brought me to this pulsating, cosmopolitan megacity this week but there is something far more local that is hogging headlines and news circuits here: the lurid exposes on the expenses of members of parliaments, which are seen as excessive. The honorable MPs are pilloried in media for having reportedly charged personal expenses – as ludicrous as they are abusive, like home repairs, furniture and fancy fixtures, and even food and phone bills – to the British taxpayer. There is, understandably, widespread public outrage.

In the Prime Minister’s Question Hour in Parliament, an embattled Gordon Brown parried blows from the Opposition who accuse his government about not putting enough attention to reforming the system of parliamentarians’ "old boys’ club" entitlements. There is a frantic "name and shame" campaign transpiring. Among the three main political parties – Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats – a mad scramble to disclose and return expenses has ensued, for claims like a nondescript trouser press and more exorbitant mortgage payments, and benefits from undeclared capital gains taxes from the sale of real estate.

There may be much political hot air and finger-pointing going on, but there is something essentially democratic and restorative about this whole dynamic. At the heart of this political brouhaha and media attention is the need to maintain accountability of public officers. The debate is showing how the social contract, as Jean-Jacque Rousseau would have it, between the electorate and taxed citizenry on one hand, and the elected representatives who have authority over the use of publicly-generated resources on the other, is violated. And how the terms of such a contract must be upheld at all times.

It is fascinating to hear Prime Minister Brown and several MPs speak about “restoring trust and confidence” in the country’s leaders. A female minister brandished on national TV a check she vowed to send, albeit belatedly, to the taxman from the sale of one of her homes, which she had not declared beforehand. Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat MP, has called for the entire parliament to “apologize to the British public.”    

The mark of a more mature democracy and a vigilant press is essentially about putting a high premium on this sense of shame and responsibility holding sway, of institutions that uphold the rule of law and fairness. We know all too well that a system that flouts or damages public accountability breeds social distrust and contributes to vast cynicism and citizen alienation from the political process.  

This is something we direly lack and which we desperately need in the country: leaders who own up to their transgressions, who allow the processes seeking transparency and accountability to take their course without fear or favor. Given the crises in the body politic fueled by scandals from "Hello Garci" to Jocjoc Bolante, from NBN-ZTE debacle and the alarming number of extra-judicial killings, many Filipinos wish that this kind of accounting of public sector leadership were firmly in place in the country.

How liberating it would be for a people to know that their leaders could not get away with murder and abuse – or the very least, resign when public trust is breached. How edifying it would be for the system if there were clear institutional avenues for redress of public (read: the everyday taxpayer) grievances. That is the only way renewal in a democracy happens – thus guaranteeing that a social contract remains only as strong as it is widely trusted.

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