HONESTY, so our grade-school teachers taught us, “is the best policy.”
To be honest about it, however, some people thrive in dishonesty. A good case in point is a presidential spokesman who must lie to cushion the impact of the unkind words of his boss. No wonder, when President Duterte said that Davao City has the highest number of rape cases in the country because it has many beautiful women, Harry Roque laughed, “The President was joking.”
If you are a regular viewer of an evening TV show where host Willie asks a “lucky contestant” to choose the “jackpot” among 10 colored boxes, you must have realized that the host knows unfairly beforehand which of the boxes contains a gift certificate for a million pesos, a house-and-lot, and a car. This is obvious because, once the contestant has chosen a box, he opens eight of the boxes, creating the illusion that the contestant has a 50/50 chance of winning in a “pera o kahon” bid. Willie offers to buy the box at higher and higher prices until the player would have said either “pera” or “kahon.” If what’s in there is the jackpot and Willie would not want the contestant to win it, he could always raise the cash bid until the contestant – always fearful of going home empty-handed – shouts, “Pera na!” The honest way could have been for the host to be on the guessing side, too.
Hard to forget is the heralded sudden transformation of a Filipino dollar-account depositor into a millionaire sometime in the 1980s. By mistake, one million dollars sent from Mellon Bank of America got credited to the account of one Melchor Javier of Parañaque City. Despite a civil case filed by the bank for recovery of the money, he did not return it.
Our Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) filed a tax-evasion case against Javier over the windfall but to no avail. The case ended up dismissed. Since the money was not legally his, then Javier would have no taxable income.
There were people who criticized Javier for dishonesty. He replied with stony silence, knowing any other mortal in the material world would have also opted to gamble his reputation with the aid of a good lawyer.
The pun that “lawyers are liars” is actually a serious indictment of the legal profession. To earn the tag abogado de campanilla, lawyers concoct believable lies.
Physicians in rural areas migrate to the crowded cities where the “bread” is, thus trampling their Hippocratic Oath to serve patients over and above material consideration.
The first and only time I saw the late Jaime Cardinal Sin in person was when he was delivering a speech on honesty before the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference at the Makati Sports Center. He recalled an incident that transpired long ago when he was Bishop of Iloilo. He asked the women at the pew whether they could translate the Bible into modern Hiligaynon. Three came forward.
“I asked them whether they had previously written anything for publication,” Sin recalled. “This time they honestly answered in the negative.”
There are acts of dishonesty that have become so common that they are now considered “normal.” To cite a few: hoarding of rice to be sold later when prices go up; re-bagging of NFA rice to be sold as commercial rice; and manufacturing of fake branded products.
Ask any politician why he is running for public office and he will always answer, “To serve the public.” They end up fattening themselves, not the public.
Admittedly, however, acts of dishonesty may arise out of necessity. It is not a good doctor who, after diagnosing a patient, honestly and immediately breaks the bad news, “Cancer, sir.” (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
