Bantay Kurapsyon (Corruption Watch)E-News

“Utang na Loob” is one distinct Filipino trait which distinguishes us from our neighboring asian counterparts. It implores upon every individual to look back with gratitude to those who have extented a good deed in any way and therefore obliges us to pay back the same …

Bantay Kurapsyon: An award-winning anti-corruption campaign

A former school teacher used to ask me what I think about “utang na loob”. My basic thought is that “utang na loob” is what I have towards my family, friends, anybody who have treated me like a real human being worth living in this planet that is dominated creatures alienated by their own deeds and thoughts. Yet my candid answer did not satisfy his question. So, I took a couple of months going around my daily life with him, giving him food (3x a day and more often than my prescribed medication!), a room to stay, an opportunity to earn, unlimited credit line for his children’s school allowances, and even trust and respect. Then, lately, I realize that he is indeed teaching me the answer to his question a couple of months ago. A good teacher indeed! His unique approach to teaching should have earned him a title “Professor”, because he professes the skill of deception, treachery and arrogance unmatched even by the likes of Hitler.

Anyhow, these are my thoughts about “utang na loob”:

In its entirety, “utang na loob” is a good trait as it imposes upon every individual a sense responsibility towards other members of the community. Unfortunately, though, “utang na loob” also breeds corruption. This happens when the one who owes a thing or two to another will for a lifetime render service to the latter. This is true among peasant farmers who are forced to believe that they owe their lives to the landlords and usurers who have given them an opportunity for a living or capital or the means of production. Yet in reality this mode of thinking has caused a culture of timeless submission to the   bondage of landlessness, oppression and repressive working conditions in the countryside. And from generation to generation, peasants will remain peasants feeding landowners with wealth and profit.

The same is true among the present day workers and citizens. Thinking that for a politician to have given him/her a job in the government, he/she is morally required to campaign and vote for him. And this culture of “utang na loob” in the bureaucracy provides politicians the co-terminus corruption insurance ticket. For as long as one stays in power and have hundreds of people lining up for job order positions, even willing to render a temporary free service (“pahina”), corruption will stay. In another way, bureaucrats have this sense of “utang na loob” towards supporters during election. Elected officials are compelled to accommodate campaign managers, supervisors, community team leaders (in exact order) for job positions during his term. And this system of political arrangement has caused inefficiency in the delivery of government social services- truly a direct mockery to the principles of civil service.

Employed individuals opt to protect employer-politicians from corruption accusations and some deserving politicians tend to defend corrupt practices of employee-supporters. Thus in this regard, people make politicians corrupt and vice versa.

But can “utang na loob” serve for the good of all? Precisely yes, though centuries of historical subservience to foreign rule and colonial education system obviously denies every Filipino to interpret the trait the correct way.

“Utang na loob” can be a powerful tool for social change. If a government employee will think that she is bound by law and by moral ethics to refuse corrupt practices by his/her superiors and by himself; if farmers and workers realize that profit comes through the ownership of the means of production and surplus labor which only comes from their exploitative service to employers and landowners and fight to attain genuine land reforms, not some extended and historically-proven failed CARP; if army and police forces fight  to defend the people, combat corruption within their structure, and stop defending a bogus President; and, if  the youth educate themselves of the social realities, fight against corruption, fight for a free and accessible education.

Let us all therefore have “utang na loob” in a correct way. How about you Mr. Armand Estacio? Do you have “utang na loob”?