The lies our leaders tell

In less than a year, Benigno Aquino III will be leaving the post to which he has ingratiated himself mostly on the basis of the collective ignorance, folly and presumptions of an unthinking constituency—slow to learn from past mistakes and even slower on the uptake where traditional politicians and their attendant imagery is concerned. 

We now know that Aquino was swept into office on the basis of imagery conjured up from a chemistry of his parent’s iconic reputations, increasing hatred for the dispensation he was supplanting, and classic voter ignorance. A good number of Filipino voters are not called “bobotante” for nothing. The incumbent officials they’ve elected to the highest positions each stand as undeniable proof of an illusion’s overwhelming efficacy.

An illusion is a visual lie. There are other forms among ordnance within a politician’s arsenal. One of the most nauseating is the oratorical fib. Unfortunately, that comes as natural to a public official, as do ridiculous “alternative realities” that have become buzzwords in the Aquino administration.

Allow us to begin by discussing truth through the eyes and mouths of politicians and then complete by citing an example of its deliberate distortion.

Lying to the public is part and parcel of being a politician. The Filipino public generally knows where the truth lies and can easily differentiate. In that way they are not stupid. The stupidity and the foundations for being labeled “bobotante” are based instead on how they either respond, or as convenience would have it, how they sink to passive consent.

The problem is not in discernment but in the collective apathy reflective of that toxic national trait that not only permits the institutionalization of lies, thus, perpetuating it, but in the institutionalization of non-accountability, the failure to correct and the failure to exact justice from injustice – the latter worsening the pathological lying aberration such that it becomes permanently imbedded in our political culture, there virtually accepted and tolerated.

Falsehood has degrees and generally held misconceptions add to the confusion and blur the truth. A lie can range from simply taking advantage of fuzzy reality. For instance, one can claim to have a background in economics, never mind that this might be nothing more than a high-school degree from a Jesuit school, to two years stay as an undergraduate in a school noted more for its post-graduate degrees rather than its run-of-the-mill collegiate courses.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a larger more predatory lie is when billions in appropriations are spirited away as “savings” and then transferred to the whims and wiles of political allies. It is a lie when they label such unconstitutional thievery as a presidential “Disbursement Acceleration Program” (DAP) intended to catalyze domestic productivity growth.

Lies perpetuate when those lied to do nothing to correct the lie. Worse, the more detached those who are lied to are, the more a lie is likely to circulate as the truth.

The foregoing sounds embarrassingly simplistic but you’ll be surprised how we’ve let grand falsehoods pass unnoticed.

Sometime around Apec (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) week before local and foreign audiences, Aquino labeled the previous administration as wasted years. He disregarded the undeniable fact that it was Gloria Arroyo who had ushered the economy out of its perennial debtor status. It was Arroyo who refinanced government foreign debt with domestic debt. It was Arroyo who trimmed the fiscal deficit, introduced the value-added tax system that now nourishes state coffers and invigorates revenue inflows.

That Aquino and certain high net worth individuals are direct beneficiaries of Arroyo’s economic competence has resulted in some comfort for the few who reap its inequitable rewards. Unfortunately, it perpetuates the lie that this government had a hand in it and effectively establishes a permanent path for more lies, fakes and poseurs to pass through the road Aquino paved.