CORRUPTION VS REVOLUTION
By Teddy Adarna
Corruption in the Philippines did not begin as a scandal.
It began as a survival tactic under colonizers.
It matured into a strategy under dictators.
It perfected itself into a system under democracy.
Today, it is no longer a crime hiding in shadows.
It is architecture.
We are born into it. Schooled by it. Employed by it. Taxed by it.
We do not merely live with corruption, we live inside its design.
Once, corruption was bribery at the edges of power.
Now, it is power itself.
Once, a thief hid from the people.
Now, he campaigns in daylight.
Once, public office was duty.
Now, it is a franchise.
Every regime promises reform.
Every regime inherits the same machine, and instead of dismantling it, they learn how to drive it better.
The plunder grows more sophisticated.
The language grows more polished.
The theft grows quieter.
And the people grow more tired.
We are told we are resilient.
But resilience has become a weapon used against us.
Instead of building industries, we export bodies.
Instead of fixing wages, we export parents.
Instead of healing the nation, we ship its lifeblood overseas and call the remittances “growth.”
A country that survives by exporting its people
is not a developing nation
it is a harvest colony with its own flag.
We are not poor because we lack wealth.
We are poor because our wealth is extracted before it reaches us.
The national budget is presented as hope.
But by the time it reaches the ground, it has already been picked clean.
Every delayed bridge.
Every overcrowded hospital.
Every classroom without chairs.
Every flood without drainage.
Every traffic jam that never ends.
These are not accidents.
They are footprints.
The absence of progress is the evidence of theft.
WHEN CORRUPTION BECOMES CULTURE
We did not just tolerate corruption.
We adapted to it.
We learned:
• how to “know someone”
• how to “go around the system”
• how to “make diskarte”
Until survival itself became entangled with dishonesty.
And then something worse happened:
Corruption stopped shocking us.
It became rumor.
Then joke.
Then background noise.
Then tradition.
A crime repeated long enough becomes heritage.
THE GREATEST LIE SOLD TO US
They told us:
“This is just how things are.”
That sentence has killed more futures than any bullet.
It trains the poor to endure.
It trains the young to leave.
It trains the corrupt to stay forever.
Hopelessness is not natural.
It is manufactured.
ARE WE ALREADY LIVING IN A DYSTOPIA?
What do we call a nation where:
• thieves are reelected,
• whistleblowers are buried,
• the hardworking are exported,
• the corrupt live in gated kingdoms,
• and truth itself is exhausted?
If this were a novel, we would call it dystopian.
Because it is real, we call it normal.
That is the final victory of corruption —
not that it rules, but that it convinces the ruled that resistance is pointless.
OUR FATE IF WE DO NOTHING
If this system continues unchecked:
• The poor will remain a renewable resource for foreign economies.
• The middle class will dissolve under taxes and inflation.
• The elite will become a permanent ruling species.
• Elections will remain theatre.
• Justice will remain a rumor.
• And the nation will survive, but never live.
We will exist as a flag without a future.
ARE WE TOO LATE?
Here is the most dangerous truth:
Nations do not collapse when corruption begins.
They collapse when people fully accept it as destiny.
We are not too late because outrage still exists.
Because writers still burn.
Because truth still leaks through cracks.
Because silence is still uncomfortable.
We are only too late the day we stop caring.
THE REAL REVOLUTION
It will not begin with weapons.
It will begin with standards.
With refusal.
With memory.
With young minds that do not inherit surrender as culture.
With citizens who treat corruption not as inevitability but as treason against the future.
No empire built on rot survives forever.
Not Rome.
Not the colonial powers.
Not dictatorships.
Not criminal dynasties.
Decay always looks permanent — until the moment it isn’t.
FINAL VERDICT
This country is not cursed.
It is captured.
And what is captured can still be taken back.
But not with comfort.
Not with apathy.
Not with jokes.
Only with consciousness sharpened into will.
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