It’s easy to get around a problem surrounding the lack of your favorite cigarette: you look for a substitute.  In the absence of Marlboro Lights, there’s always Winston Lights or Marlboro Reds.  The same is true when it comes to drinking… or is it?

   Two summers ago, when I spent the summer term at UP Diliman, me and a few friends from the boarding house decided to drink a round of beers to celebrate the end of my exam.  I didn’t know much about Manila, so I expected that they drank the same kind of San Miguel Beer I was used to guzzling here in Baguio.  It was a relatively rural area (the irony of it), but the nearby stores didn’t carry SMB.  After a few stores - and a trip to MiniStop - we finally got San Miguel.

   For the non-alcoholics, it’s a different sort: back in those days, I literally had to train myself to drink RC Cola.  Here in Baguio, there’s no such thing as “not Coke:” you’d have to be a lowlander to appreciate Pepsi.  Coke Sakto was just about as far as the Coca-Cola continuum will go in that neighborhood, where the nearest Coke-selling place was the soda fountain at CASAA.  The soonest I got to the bus terminal on my way out of Manila, I drank Coke to my heart’s content.

   Nein.  So the Germans say.

   A recent Pulse Asia survey shows that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is the most corrupt President in the Philippines, followed by Ferdinand Marcos in the #2 slot and Joseph Estrada in the #3 position.  This is no survey that you would like to jockey a top spot for.

   But wait: should we make a big deal about statistics in the first place?  After all, Benjamin Disraeli wrote that infamous quote: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

   Whenever I do social science, I wouldn’t rely on statistics for two reasons.  One, I’m not a good statistician (I took my Statistics course twice).  Second - and perhaps the most important - is that statistical data is all-too-often misread and misinterpreted.  Numbers show something, all right, but the numbers rarely ever tell the story.  To me, the story behind the numbers is perhaps more important than the story the numbers tell by themselves: numbers beg the question of sampling method, statistical tests, and so on and so forth.  As such, any statistical presentation of anything is itself a source of doubt.  Which is a good thing and a bad thing at the same time.

   I’m not an Arroyo supporter - for heaven’s sake I’m an Arroyo critic - and I must say that while I agree that Arroyo is corrupt beyond reasonable doubt, there’s just no way in hell an unbiased and objective survey would point to her being second only to Marcos, or even Estrada.  Had Marcos been a non-factor, she would definitely top the list of the most corrupt Presidents post-Marcos.

   Here’s why: every corrupt excess Marcos had in two decades of iron-handed rule is the absolute benchmark of corruption (I hope) in the Philippines.  You can throw every shred of evidence of corruption against Macoy and you wouldn’t be hard-pressed to back them up: from the billions plundered and coursed through Swiss bank accounts to Imelda’s shoe collection when Malacañang was raided post-EDSA I.  Surely, Arroyo wouldn’t make the same mistake in being far more corrupt than Marcos to incite the anger and revulsion of the Filipino people in being “more corrupt than Marcos.”

   As far as Erap is concerned, say what you will about the Sandiganbayan verdict, but the verdict just goes to show that if we cannot indict the former President fairly and justly for plunder, we might as well indict him for a thinly-disguised charge of incompetence.  The evidence against Erap, as the prosecution panel said, can fill up a room.  If it did, then what more for Gloria?

   Here’s the thing: I’m not downplaying the negative effects of surveys against the President, but once the survey’s findings becomes questionable, then it is possible to downplay the whole idea of the survey.  Especially when the survey is supposed to corroborate something obvious.

   Not too long ago, I was talking to an instructor-friend of mine: like me, he has no love lost for Arroyo.  But he brings up a rather interesting point: aren’t the allegations against GMA completely circumstancial, like connect-the-dots painting-by-numbers things?  If anything, my general impression of the Arroyo Presidency is that it has proven to be a scapegoat for everything wrong with this country: if you can’t blame anyone else, blame Arroyo.  This goes for everything from the ULTRA Stampede to the death of Marrianet Amper.  Giving her the title of “Most Corrupt” only serves to add to the long list of “circumstancial crimes” we can pinpoint to GMA.

   Anyway, here’s what I think: statistics only tell half the story.  The other half still remains as speculation.

   I live in - and for all intents and purposes, I love - Baguio City.  I was born here, I was raised here, and if anything, I would prefer to die here.  I wouldn’t have problems in the afterlife if I am to be interred in the crowded necropolis that is the Baguio City Cemetery.  My love for Baguio has been a 22-year love affair: ever since I was born, I knew of no other place where I should live.

   I live near Brentwood Village, a place I sometimes refer to as “Little Seoul.”  Pardon the pun, but it is one Seoul-ful place, where Koreans have settled with their questionable residency certificates and business permits to operate English language centers.  Anyone fresh off college and looks for work would be hard-pressed not to find an ESL center at Brentwood, teaching a foreign language to foreigners.  It is the irony of it all.

   I’m not a “nationalist:” if anything, I share the same conundrum the Mahatma himself, Mohandas Gandhi, faced when he returned to India: he had to speak English instead of Hindustani.  At least I don’t have to suffer the nationalistic indemnity and damnation of having to speak a few words of Korean in order to “properly” communicate myself.  But I’ve learned a few bits and pieces of Hanggul: to know that a given place is either a church, an Internet café, or a bar and restaurant.

   There’s a bulletin board at Porta Vaga that’s the exclusive domain of Koreans: signs written in Hanggul advertising heaven-knows-what: prayer meetings, boarding houses, business opportunities.  I don’t know, and I wouldn’t know until someone is patient enough to teach me the language.  Not to be ethnocentric (the anthropologist’s mortal sin), but somehow I find myself irritated at the Korean invasion.  I feel an invasion of my space.

   There is, was, and forever will be an aversion to the invasion of space: whether it is personal space, interpersonal space, or social space.  Lately, America has been debating over the issue of outer space, even.  Wearing my hat as a passing “social scientist,” I think that everything from global policies to personal identities are built on space: without spaces situating these concepts, we effectively become voided and empty.

   And so perhaps I couldn’t be blamed for having a negative impression against Korean migrants in general.  Surely, there are a lot of kind-hearted and considerate Koreans out there, but the thing is, I’d rather have my space - and my identity - back where it belongs.