Someone Is Watching!

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Jesuit priest Albert Alejo started in 2004 what seemed to be an idealistic movement to address the perennial problem of corruption in the government. He called it “Ehem Movement” which has been giving anti-corruption seminars both in government and in civil society sector for more transparency and honesty in handling the finances of the government. The word “Ehem” is culturally a Filipino guttural hash word usually an expression to remind someone that somebody is “watching”, “present” or “around the corner”. An anti-corruption initiative of the Philippine Jesuits, the Ehem Movement echoes the urgent call for cultural reform against corruption in the Philippines. It is culturally a deterrent for someone who is going to commit a crime. Indeed, it has become popular in universities, colleges, and in church circles. The Ehem Movement is used oftentimes for the government’s moral recovery program, for, while it addresses corruption, its methodology is also culturally familiar and acceptable to many. Its applicability to other countries needs to be carefully studied. “Corruption starts in the family,” Fr. Alejo asserts. “When a parent asks his child to buy a can of sardines from the store and gives that child 100 pesos (roughly 2 US dollars),” he narrates, “and forgets to ask for the receipts or the change of his money, that parent is contributing to the culture of corruption in this country.” Such assumption is, of course, not farfetched. When children got used to not being checked, and are not obliged to give accounting to their transactions, they may think that it is the normal thing to do. Ehem aims at achieving a renewed sensitivity to the evil of corruption and its occurrence in ordinary life. It seeks finally to make intense awareness of the people’s vulnerability to corruption, their own uncritiqued, often unwitting practice of corruption in daily life. Photo credits: Pixabay