BACOLOD CITY — We are wasting our time, effort, and money arguing over the form of government or whether to have a convention or a Constituent Assembly to craft our Constitution.

As I pointed out in this space many times, any form of government is best, if best administered. And the form of amending it is also the best if those amending it are honest. The U.S. and many other countries amend their Constitution by their legislature.

But the main cause of all these problems is corruption. We have been known to have the most corrupt government. So instead of amending the Constitution, solve corruption first and everything will be fine.

Federal government is good when best administered. But, don’t you know it can also be the best in promoting corruption? More corruption in the local government as they will be “independent” in using pork barrel funds and getting kickback from government projects?

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As President, the late Ramon Magsaysay visited Iloilo City. A clerk in a national government office approached him and complained that for two months, they had not yet received their salary. RM was angry, ordered the head of the local office to have them paid soonest.

He told his aide to have the erring official in Manila charged and “Be sure, he is dismissed.”

He did this wherever he went. Instant action against graft and corruption. People in government behaved. He had telegrams at only 10 centavos to be sent him to report graft and corruption.

Why is this problem not addressed by our government officials? The answer is when he points a finger at a grafter, four other fingers are pointing back at him

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There is no problem in the country, big or small not caused by corruption. Mindanao War? The Muslims are frustrated all these decades. The national officials, including their own leaders divert the money to their pockets instead of the development there.

Food crisis? Government’s interest is not in food security by making our farmers productive but importing rice from foreign countries, in effect subsidizing the farmers of these countries.

In importation, those sticky-fingered officials make fast bucks which they could not, if we don’t import. And we don’t import if we have enough produce.

So, discourage production. At the height of the present harvest, NFA flooded the market with rice from Thailand and now a big volume of rice is coming to Negros from Vietnam.

The other day, a palay farmer working on one and a half hectare was crying. His expense was more than doubled. Fertilizer which used to cost 700 to 800 pesos a bag, now costs nearly P2,000. The cost of cultivation because of the steep rise of oil cost is more than doubled. So with the cost of farm chemicals.

And when he sold his palay, the traders quoted it at only P10 a kilo, the same price last year when the farm inputs were half the cost now. He also cannot sell to NFA, lacking the facilities for drying and transporting. Besides, NFA buys palay only in press releases.

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You change the form of government, it will be the same, even worse perhaps. When Senate President Manny Villar, came to have dinner with the Sunshine Boys, I was out of the country. I texted his aide to just e-mail me his stand on corruption. The Senate President has good plans to eliminate corruption which I published here.

Manny Villar is well meaning but a Greek philosopher of old once wrote, “There’s many a twist, twixt the cup and the lip.” And 15th century philosopher Robert Burton said the same thing.

Cha cha? Let us tackle corruption first. Who will do it? Then we go back to the story of “Who will bell the cat?” A group of mice met in a convention to solve their problem with the cat. A young brilliant mouse stood up and suggested, “Let us put a bell in the neck of the cat.”

An elderly mouse with the wisdom of the age, asked, “Who will bell the cat?” No one volunteered. It was dangerous to one’s life.

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I got an e-mail from a friend ex-pat Robert Strausse. I sympathize with him on his many operations in the U.S. hospital.

He wrote it was not only Roosevelt but Churchill also who knew of an impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a justification for America to go to war. In his mid 80s, Robert, quoted to me Mark Twain, “Youth is a wonderful thing…Too bad it’s wasted on children.”

He asked me to write about Cha Cha. Robert, you are not reading me everyday. Surf your website. I did a lot of writing on it the last three weeks. Get well, my friend. Don’t waste your time getting sick. This is a beautiful world to be enjoyed.

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