Divine Justice

My email is subscribed to Manila Standard columnist Tony Abaya‘s mailing list so I receive copies of his articles for his column On The Other Hand as well as reactions to his articles from his readers. Recently, he wrote about former president Erap Estrada who disgraced himself by becoming the first ever Philippine ex-president to have been convicted of corruption. Not that he is the only corrupt president we ever had but he’s got the distinction of having his successor whose conspiratorial rise to power had to pursue the corruption case to help her in her own issue of legitimacy. Perhaps if GMA have not been facing serious legitimacy issues since her questionable assumption to power, she may not have pursued the case more vigrously but instead let the case fall between the cracks, forgotten, as any other corruption issue that has ever plagued our country. This is why I viewed the conviction as in a good part, politically motivated, regardless of the strength of the evidence. The will to prosecute Erap was sustained by GMA’s political survival considerations. Not too soon after Erap’s conviction, talk of presidential pardon was already filling the political forums – shamelessly. Maybe this is a part of a greater plan by the GMA, regardless of the fact any idiot prosecutor should be able to win the case against the bungling Erap if one only followed the nauseating telenovela of his impeachment. About this presidential pardon, Mr. Abaya wrote that Erap should not be given pardon, to which I absolutely agree. Mr. Abaya’s article elicited a reaction from a letter-writer thus,

“The conviction of Estrada is a first in our history. Even if Estrada is never sent to a real prison, it is a good sign that some form of justice is still alive in our country. We are a forgiving people — that is our weakness and that is also our strength. We believe in divine mercy and divine justice.“

What caught my attention was the letter-writer’s reference to a supposed divine mercy, which is pure wishful thinking and I assert, part of the very issue at hand, the same corrupted system that produced Erap – the corrupted moral ethics of our people as supported by Catholic hogwash. Believing in a just merciful god and imagined divine mercy skews our sense of justice and contributes dearly to why corruption in our country is practically a way of life – it sends out the message that corruption pays since they can always ask for forgiveness and be forgiven. Just look at Imelda. Our people already forgave her even as she still flouts her wealth acquired systematically through two decades of the same thing Erap has been convicted of. This questionable moral system is perpetuated mainly by the Catholics such that our people’s sense of justice is based more on forgiveness and wishful thinking than deterring kleptocrats from plundering the public coffers. Because of this belief of eternal justice and divine mercy, our people are a lot more willing to forgive, forget what happened, and move on since their imaginary god is supposed to mete out whatever is the most just punishment in the after-life. In this sense I agree with the letter-writer that our people’s forgiving nature make our nation weak. That the letter-writer also said that it’s also our strength is debatable. This Christian teaching of mercy and justice, if we are to really get serious about it, should impel us to repeal the laws and abolish the law-enforcement agencies altogether since god will punish offenders, yes? Or better, they can wake up from their daydreaming and embrace real social justice by going after the rest of the looting gang and putting them behind bars.