Erap, Pardoned. Woot.

Erap has been living almost like a free man for the past six years, in and out of his resthouse. What's the difference of a pardon?

A professor told me once that if we give away even just a little of our freedom, whether as individuals or as a people, we should be ready to give up all of it eventually. Our freedom to seek for truth and political parity has already been compromised when we let Erap stay in his rest house with nary a whimper. It's been compromised a little bit more when we allowed him to go to his mother's birthday parties. One compromise, and another for a good six years. And now? It's completely given away.

Somehow I can't find it in myself to be angry or even offended by this expected pardon. I didn't do anything to stop it in the beginning. Did you?

Three years studying political science, and what did I learn. In the Philippines, we can rarely depend on our judicial system because in instances when it matters most, the politics overrides the justice. It's always easy to dismiss it as a culture thing and not do anything about it—or better yet, to just take chances in another country and start new. Nevertheless. various solutions have been proposed. One of the more common and acceptable ones is to improve the education system in the country. But here's the catch. You need a good government first before anyone can go about doing that. And how does one achieve a good government?

Oh, I don't know. A good start would be to kill all our politicians and ground their innards for pig feed. Fat chance though. Money makes the world say oompa-loompa and our so-called leaders have it. We don't. You can waste three years of your life studying political systems, losing sleep over thirty-five citations for this wholly remarkable paper your professor invariably lost anyway, and gain weight, and this is what you learn in order to save our beautifully ignorant country: not much.