Honest to goodness

Shih (Chinese symbol of Honesty)

Last Saturday (July 2, 2005), after attending a wedding in Las Piñas, I head my way to Dasmariñas, Cavite to get my used clothes so that I could have it wash by Sunday, it was already 8pm when I leave Las Piñas and arrived in Cavite at around 10pm, I immediately get my bag full of used clothes and went on to ride a bus via Lawton.

After more or less 15 minutes, a bus finally arrived, at that time I wasn’t feeling sleepy yet, so what I did was I’ve watch the TV on board, the TV is tuned in GMA 7, IMBESTIGADOR, anchored by the broadcaster Mike Enriquez famous for his very powerful line “Hinding hindi namin kayo tatantanan!”. Their episode was entitled “Pinoy, tapat ka ba?” One thing that caught my attention was their topic regarding the “Ibatans”, they were the inhabitants of Batanes, an island in the far northern part of our country, what makes it interesting with this place is that, there’s a store there named “Honesty Coffee Shop” wherein there’s no saleslady nor any people who will watch for the customers, what the buyers do is they get the items they will buy then they will drop their payments in a drop box, just in case you have a change, you’ll write your name and the change you owe, then on the next day you’ll be able to get your change, imagine that, pure honesty is revolving and the store has long been operating for 10 years already. One thing more, they have a sole radio station which extends public service by providing information on loss items, most of them were watch, wallets, eyeglasses and etc., seems like it has been a habit for the Ibatans to return loss items to their owners, certainly “Finders Keepers” is tabooed to them. Thumbs up to the people of Batanes!!!

Aside from that topic, they’ve also featured a sort of test pertaining to the honesty of Filipinos, what they did was they planted 80 wallets with a 200 peso bill and a letter that goes like this “Pagkasyahin mo na muna tong dalawang daan sa loob ng dalawang linggo”, that statement in the letter was not the exact word for word but the main thought is depicted. They scattered their assets in different establishments, such as the Baclaran Church and the city of Makati, as a result out of the 80 wallets, only 15 have not been returned to the owner, so it depicts an 81.25% honesty for the Filipinos, hmmm..looks amazing isn’t it, but that’s the reality.
This clearly shows the moral values that every Filipino has, but I bet this data will change if we will be talking of thousands of pesos and not just hundreds, I’m not identifying the weakness of us Filipinos but I guess that’s the reality, and we can’t blame anyone, I guess the sole reason is our present economic situation but I believe that the success of our country still lies in our own hands, and our government officials only serve as a guide so we should not deeply rely on them.