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BY OSCAR CRUZ
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Friday, February 3, 2017
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IN ESSENCE, political representation means that public officials elected by the people for the tenure and exercise of public authority should always remember that they are given the authority and the leadership more specifically to serve the people in general and particularly in responding to the former’s needs and yearnings in the here and now.
In other words, woe to the people if their supposed representatives look out and work but for their own personal interests and family benefits – instead of looking after the public welfare and promoting the common good of the people.
Among the liabilities of the democratic system – and so with royalty and dictatorship – incompetence and dishonesty, graft and corrupt practices not to mention insensibility and shamelessness are the most serious ethical bankruptcy and moral degradation whose usual victims are the people themselves. Such liabilities constitute a compromise of the proper and expected function of the political community which is synonymous to a marked disservice to and gross betrayal of the governed.
In their naked realities, graft and corruption are both the plain stealing of public funds given by the general public for public welfare. Graft and corrupt practices in the government can be readily considered as a big curse or a downright malediction of the governed who in fact pay their governors with their unending taxes and who in turn as a matter of fact also steal from the already poor and suffering governed.
It is neither hard to understand nor difficult to accept the truth that the political community exercising public administration from the local to the national levels, may not be oriented and dedicated to the service of the people in general. Thus it is repeatedly said and emphasized that, “The State is the steward of the people’s resources” which is it administers in view of the people’s common good.
This is why “impersonal functionalism”, “overgrown bureaucracy”, “unjust personal interests” are some of the big, real and operative enemies of the citizens of the State.
No wonder then that with such negative perception of the political community in this Country, there are those who earnestly and even adamantly propose the boycotting of the forthcoming election. This is neither surprising nor really unacceptable.
The truth, however, remains that political participation is a fundamental feature of a democratic society./PN
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