Institutionalizing morality

An interesting, if not exactly novel, point was raised in a forum I was at yesterday. In essence, it contends that the more serious concern with respect to the Philippine government and legal system is not the inadequacy or inefficacy of our current laws, but the character of the public officials implementing them.

Now normally, as I’ve indicated, this would hardly be a new argument. After all, I’ve heard it, perhaps phrased slightly differently, from countless fellow citizens, usually as a prelude to some appeal for greater “spirituality” in society. But with no less than the Chief Justice, our highest judicial officer, stating just last week that what the country needed was “moral force,” I think that the position merits some discussion.

To start with, I have to say that on the most basic, instinctive level, I find the first part of the argument appealing. Who wouldn’t, particularly in a country where public “servants” already awash in cash have no qualms about dipping further into an already depleted national treasury while cash-strapped taxi drivers, for all their poverty, nonetheless see fit to return thousands of pesos inadvertently left in their cabs. It’s easy enough to see that personal “character” and “morals” must play a role there somewhere.

But it is with the other component of the position that I have some difficulty with. I mean sure, we could certainly use more honest and upright women and men in government, but does this necessarily have to preclude changing the existing legal system as well?

Ideally, laws are in place precisely to encourage certain kinds of behavior and to discourage others. Granted, law and language being as subject to “interpretation” as they are, they will not always be used or followed in the manner originally “intended.” However, I do not think that this “uncertainty” in legal text unavoidably implies that one law (or one way of phrasing a law) is as good as any other. In other words, the impossibility of coming up with an ultimately idiot-proof (or perhaps, tyrant-proof) legal text should not be a justification for not striving to come up with a tighter formulation.

Just take the case of many of our public laws, a significant portion of which were enacted under the less than ideal conditions of the Martial Law regime. Or take the case of our law on inciting to sedition, which is still largely based on statutes enacted by the Americans during the early years of colonization. These laws, which we continue to observe to this day, given their context and original purpose, are, quite unsurprisingly, heavily biased toward upholding executive power as against the power of a popularly elected legislature, and the right of citizens to free speech.

I suppose we can argue that if we had a “good” President, who had a strong personal commitment to democratic ideals, it would not matter if these laws were still on the books — she or he would simply not apply them in a manner which tended to stifle democratic discourse. But that does that mean we should leave them as is, crossing our fingers that that “good” President comes to power? Or do we try and change them, making it more difficult for these laws to be “interpreted” in an abusive or oppressive manner, just in case we get a “bad” President?

Personally, I’d rather we hedge our bets.