I never knew Angelo Reyes personally, but reading the news of his suicide, with a gunshot to the heart (was it a last act of thoughtfulness, that he did not disfigure his face with a gunshot to the head?), sent chills down my spine, more literally than I would have preferred. Aside from the obvious intelligence as can be seen from his scholastic records, there is no virtue of the former general that I am in a position to extol, but it seems he himself was a victim of a corrupt system so entrenched that saying No to pabaon would’ve made an outcast of him. “Masyadong nagmamalinis” is a label no one wants, although it is our duty to “magmalinis”; a profound failure to do this duty is a huge reason that corruption thrives, and seems to get worse each day. Truly we as a people are known for pakisama, to a fault.

I myself am guilty of this pakisama; once or twice I have closed my eyes and walked away from questionable deals, petty ones that involved a few thousands, sometimes a few hundred pesos. I can only be grateful that I have the luxury of walking away; many people don’t. That is all the “linis” I can lay claim to. Walking away. Refusing to be part of it. Refusing to share the loot. Perhaps I should have been “heroic” enough to prevent, if not expose, such things? But to whom? To ad agencies, television executives, suppliers of ad agencies? The amounts involved were usually laughable; it would probably get a second hand laptop, and no, i don’t mean a MacBook.

I know that protesting such things will amount to nothing, other than getting ostracized, and hey, I needed my job, too. It has happened before, in a television network. Our producer was filching funds, pathetic amounts, really—say P30 from each meal allowance. I didn’t know that at first, because I usually did not even eat what they served (yes, I admit to being a bit of a cono that way) and I didn’t care if we didn’t have enough Coke. It’s just too much trouble to complain about such things; it is far easier to just go out and buy a can of Coke. Eventually the rest of the crew protested, wrote a letter and asked me to sign along with them. I did. Next thing I knew I was accused of being “promotor” of the whole thing, and got a threat for it, “Baka mawalan kayo ng projects dtio, ayaw namin ng mahirap katrabaho.”  That, from a network executive.

Few people know that that is one of the reasons I quit working in television. Lucky for me, I don’t have mouths to feed, not even my own. But what then? Should I have gone to DoLE?  Hell no, forget it. Bad attitude, probably. Practical? Very. Because, what then? Rouse a fucking rabble because someone was filching P30 from a roughly P100 meal allowance?

No way, man.

And that is exactly the attitude that got us to where we are.