Most people with cable television watched intently the Senate hearings concerning corruption in the highest government offices in the land. There was live blogging and this being the Philippines, there certainly was no shortage of comments or opinions from our national surplus of pundits.

Many people were secretly expecting the government to fall after the former economic planning minister exposed the attempts of the election chief to influence, through brazen bribery the awarding of a broadband contract with a Chinese corporation. It was as if we had never known that official corruption officially existed all along and as if we expected our newly-minted Senators to ferret out the truth. What a joke! The old reliable clowns all acted with reliable predictability. The Diva staged a walkout. Our learned protectors displayed all sorts of legal legerdemain with the sole express purpose of protecting their private playing grounds. And the former economic planning minister punted on his chance to become a hero by simply doing his job and remain true to the Filipino people he swore to serve. Instead he woefully fell short and mumbled a series of excuses averring executive privilege.

These are the times that try my soul. Corruption is so pervasive and lethal yet we are all so wrapped-up with our personal loyalties. There are literally thousands of upper-level government employees who know that corruption is a daily event and while most of them are not active participants, none of them would even consider rocking their sinecures and blowing the whistle on their patrons.

Will we ever get it? The problem appears to be much worse than we thought. We all assumed they were being born at the rate of one a minute. It’s turning out to be a generation-wide pestilence. We have seen the suckers, and they are us.

Today we all witnessed the spectacle of a Senate with a shallow bench. Oh, the quality of the questions! It was all about grandstanding and media mileage. Totally unproductive. 10 million dollar bribes here and there no longer surprise us because it has become ingrained, commonplace even in the highest echelons. The one mitigating factor that assuages us all is the fact that all this wheeling and dealing occurred before the husband of GMA had his brush with death. What did we get from all the bluster? Sample question: “how did GMA’s husband talk to you? Remember, I know this waiter who works in the place where you met”.

All the people involved in this deal are from Central Casting. No new names. Election officials, the son of the Speaker, retired military personnel. What do we all know? That the entire country is corrupt. Everyone’s on the take. Nothing gets done. We are all on the know yet we fall into the same trap these traditional politicians spring every single time: we get disgusted, we despair and we resolve never to get involved. We leave governance to them and we trust them to conduct official business with integrity, decency and honesty.

We must become serious with “pulse politics”. Without exception, leadership positions are fixed for a single term with no multiple family memberships. This is the one, best way to put an end to all this nonsense. We have a country with virtually no healthcare infrastructure, poor educational pathways, crumbling roads and bridges and what is the first order of the day? To seek pardon from an unrepentant former president who built mansions for mistresses using public money. We need to get real.

Ever since the elections, I have been to our clinic in Oklahoma three times. At least 60,000 frequent flier miles. I haven’t posted an entry for some time because I have been covering for one of our physicians here for the past week and it has been busy. It is gratifying to know that patients who stopped coming to the clinic during my absence faithfully return as soon as they know I am back. Guymon, OK is rapidly changing. I was impressed with the brand new Super Wal-Mart that recently opened in our fair town that now provides the community with 24 hour service. A new school was inaugurated to keep up with the burgeoning student population. There are double the number of traffic lights compared to when we first got here 11 years ago and the police department has trebled in size. Rumors are rife regarding the impending construction of another meat packing plant with 3000 employees. There is a lot of progress in the little “medically underserved” town that allowed me to change my visa years ago.

We have kept our house in Guymon. Our books continue to adorn our beloved library and many toys of the children are still stored somewhere. Our yard is being tended by a dear friend and the bar stays fully stocked.

We all try to make the most of our lives and we strive to provide the best opportunities for our children. It just so happened that we were able to build a good life for ourselves here in the US. It required a lot of work and commitment and we had to hurdle many challenges. This is why I am very conscious of the many sacrifices that immigrants have to pull off daily. It would always have been better had the opportunities existed at home and we could be close to family and friends and community but this has never been the case in my lifetime. We Filipinos always had to seek a better life elsewhere. The variety of educational choices, security, technological convenience and compensation were never simply to be found in our country. To the politically unconnected and the unlanded, to those not relying upon a substantial inheritance, the egalitarian benefits of democracy do not exist.

Because our children are in school in Bacolod, I am all alone in our house. After work, the solitude becomes unbearable. This, just after a week. Nothing compared to the years of living alone in inhospitable and intolerant communities.

My patients want me and my family to return to Guymon and it is apparent that I am needed here. What they will never understand though is the striking contrast in the quality of life between the great plains in the US and the great misery found in the majority of the 7100 islands in the Philippines. I can not remain uninvolved in the rescue of my country. So while all these second and third generation scions of political kingpins continue to plot the ruinous course of our nation we just can’t pray for guidance to descend upon them because that’s exactly what we’ve done all along and the consequences have been disastrous.

There is a clear an urgent call for all of us ordinary citizens to become servant-leaders. We must find out how we can best serve our country and help the poor and the weak. All our small contributions pooled together will change our world.

Most of us who have heard about Mother Teresa of Calcutta know her as the “living saint” ever since Time magazine put her on the cover with such a title. The name stuck and soon after she died in 1997, Pope John Paul II fast-tracked her canonization process so that she is now referred to as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. Now the same Time magazine has published excerpts from “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light” which is a collection of her private journals and letters that clearly depicts what St John of the Cross called a “dark night” of the soul, when one feels completely abandoned by God, that lasted for decades until the end of her life.

Blessed Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity and was greatly engaged in ministering to the poorest of the poor when she confided to the archbishop of Calcutta “I find no words to express the depths of the darkness.” A couple of years later she wrote “in my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me — of God not being God — of God not existing.”

Eventually Mother Teresa was able to sublimate these dreadful doubts and began understanding the sense of total abandonment that Jesus must have experienced when he was crucified. This understanding allowed her to be faithful to her heroic ministry.

I myself believe in God mostly because I want to believe in an afterlife. I don’t want to think that nothing follows this brief earthly spell of ours. It is comforting to know that even our Saints who have laid their lives for others are sometimes wracked with uncertainty. What matters is whether we can make these doubts transform us into even more compassionate persons.

In 2005, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was almost driven out of power when it was revealed that tapes existed of her conversation with one of only 5 election Commissioners, Virgilio “Garci” Garcillano during the 2004 Presidential Election. In the recording, Gloria’s voice is unmistakably caught participating in the following discussion:

GMA: Hello…
Gary: Hello, ma’am, good morning. OK ma’am, mas mataas ho siya (he is leading, referring to the votes for Fernando Poe Jr.) pero mag-compensate po sa Lanao yan (but it will be compensated in Lanao).
GMA: So, I will still lead by more than one, overall?
Gary: More or less. It’s the advantage ma’am. Parang ganun din ang lalabas (The outcome will be the same).
GA: It cannot be less than one M?
Gary: Pipiilitin ma’am natin yan. Pero as of the other day, 982. (We will try. But as of the other day, 982).
GMA: Kaya nga eh (That’s why) …
Gary: And then if we can get more in Lanao…
GMA: Hindi pa ba tapos (It’s not over yet)?
Gary: Hindi pa ho, meron pa hong darating na seven municipalities (Not yet, there will be returns from seven municipalities).
GMA: Ah OK, OK

GMA subsequently apologizes to the Filipino people for her “inappropriate” conduct but insists that the call did not matter anyway because she won by more than a million votes over her next rival. Since then, she has never failed to change the subject whenever the matter would surface, insisting that she has a country to run and peace to keep and so on and forth.

One major reason why I cast my lot as a candidate for the Senate was precisely to prove the inability of all our traditional politicians to search for the truth. I maintained throughout the campaign that what Arroyo did was without question a crime punishable by impeachment just as stoning was the prescribed penalty for adultery 2000 years ago. Only, just like before, who among our guardians could cast the first stone?

I have a personal stake in this issue. Together with 17 other candidates, I did not get a single vote in 22 voting centers in Maguindanao, an area in Mindanao that retained the henchmen of Garcillano. Cheating remains a sordid reality in our elections and it will continue to discourage people from participating in democratic processes and it will continue to disenfranchise citizens who do not have any access to the mighty powers available only to our traditional dynasties. The entire political structure is corrupted and so heavily stacked in favor of the Arroyos and the Zubiris it will take much more than retiring and reassigning a few fall guys. Our country needs peaceful revolutionary change starting from the top, nothing less.

Comes now Vidal Doble, a character with a name that le Carre could have invented. Doble is prepared to disclose how the wiretapping was perpetrated. Imagine how some people in the “intelligence” establishment in our country can listen with impunity to even the most confidential and perhaps criminal calls from the highest officials in our land?

But do our leaders want the truth to emerge? Immediately a cacophony of protestations erupted in the Senate chamber that sought to suppress the re-airing of the famous tape because we are patronizingly reminded about the criminal nature as well as the inadmissibility of a wiretap. Can we tell all these clowns that this method will not work any longer? This issue will not die just because our economy is booming and there is finally real peace in Mindanao and our educational system is First World and Philippine healthcare is the envy of the world. We need to know the truth. “Hello, Garci” needs to be reopened. Did Arroyo’s call to the Commissioner result in even one, illegitimate vote because if it did then we’ve had a pretender for President these last 3 years.

Gandhi’s Satyagraha is anchored upon the quest for truth thru sacrifice and active nonviolence. If we sincerely desire a country we can be proud of, a country that prizes justice and equality we need to be prepared to sacrifice. I don’t see the sacrifice coming from our traditionals any time soon. Once and for all, if we really want to find out what truly happened, we’ll have to do it ourselves.