In the latest rankings on perceptions of government corruption by the Berlin-based Transparency International, the Philippines dropped ten notches, from 131st in 2007 to 141st (tied with Cameroon Iran and Yemen) in 2008 out of 180 countries surveyed. (Inquirer, Sept. 24)
In the 2007 rankings, the Philippines had also dropped ten notches from the rankings in 2006.
While these rankings are based on perceptions, not on actual quantitative measurements (which is humanly impossible), anyone who has lived in this country in the past two years at least, knows that these perceptions have a basis in fact.
It was during this period that the scandal over the ZTE broadband contract had broken out, in which no less than the economics planning minister (Romulo Neri) had divulged to the Senate that he had been offered a P200 million bribe by the elections commission chairman (Benjamin Abalos), the apparent broker, to approve the deal, and that he (Neri) had reported the bribe offer to President Arroyo herself who, he said, told him not to accept the bribe but to approve the contract anyway. Then President Arroyo herself flew to China the next day to witness the signing of the contract.
That the contract was eventually scrapped because of public outrage, not because of any pangs of conscience on the part of the president, is demonstrated by the fact that no one was ever sent to jail for his or her participation in this sordid business. It shows – admittedly without proof beyond reasonable doubt – that the president herself was in the middle of this culture of corruption, as Neri was quoted by two senators (Lacson and Madrigal) to have said to them in a private meeting.
So it is not surprising that the Philippines dropped 20 notches in two years in the rankings of Transparency International.
That these rankings are based on perceptions rather than on quantitative measurements, as the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission (PACG) says in its defense, is a weak riposte.(Inquirer, Sept. 26).
If our rankings had climbed up, instead of dropping down, 20 notches in two years, the PAGC would be buying full page ads in the newspapers and 30-second spots on TV, bragging about its ‘accomplishments,’ even though the rankings would still be based on perceptions, not on quantitative data.
How does the Philippines compare with our immediate neighbors? Out of 180 countries, squeaky clean Singapore is 4th, Hong Kong is 12th , Japan and the US are tied with Belgium in 18th, Taiwan is 39th, South Korea is 40th, Malaysia is 47th, China is 72nd, Thailand is 80th, India is 85th, Vietnam is 121st, Indonesia is 126th
The neighboring countries perceived to be more corrupt than the Philippines are Timor-Leste (145th), Bangladesh (147th), Laos (151st), Cambodia (166th), and Myanmar (178th).
Of the 39 countries perceived to be more corrupt than the Philippines, 26 are in Africa, five are former Soviet republics in Central Asia, three are in the Middle East, three are in Latin America, two are in Europe (Russia and Belarus).
An the other end of the scale, the countries perceived to be the least corrupt are: Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden (tied for 1st), Singapore (4th), Finland and Switzerland (tied for 5th) Iceland and the Netherlands (tied for 7th), Australia and Canada (tied for 9th), Luxembourg (11th), Austria and Hong Kong (tied for 12th), Germany and Norway (tied for 14th), Ireland and the United Kingdom (tied for 16th), and Belgium, Japan and the USA (tied for 18th).
Keep in mind also that the Philippines is the only country with two entries (Marcos and Estrada) in the list of the Ten Most Corrupt World Leaders in the Guinness Book of World Records. Some people think that that list will soon include a third Filipino.
How do we get out of this shameful moral sinkhole? Definitely not through elections in 2010, even assuming that they push through and are not sidelined by recurrent maneuvers to amend the Constitution to allow the incumbents to constitutionally remain in power beyond 2010.
Our electoral system carries the seeds of its own corruption, requiring as it does billions of pesos for candidates for national offices to wage a successful campaign, making them hostages to financiers who will want their pound of flesh – in the form of fat government contracts and/or positions of influence – if and when their candidate/s win/s.
As recent events have shown, our justice system is also corrupt, with justices appointed by no one else but the President. If that President is at the center of our culture of corruption, as Neri claims of the incumbent, then all his or her appointees would also be corrupt.
So what is the way out? More and more prayers, as my class’ mentor in Shakespearean drama, Fr. James B. Reuter SJ, is often quoted in local e-group chatter?
I doubt it. If you look at the countries perceived to be the least corrupt, none of them are particularly big on prayers as solution to national problems, with the possible exception of the USA with its army of Christian Evangelicals.
Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan are predominantly Buddhist and most of their people do not even worship a personal God. The Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon countries are predominantly mainstream Protestant and secular, and they observe a functional separation of church and state, even if the Scandinavians pay tax to support the Lutheran Church, in the same way that they pay tax to support their individual monarchies: both are part of their history. If memory serves, the British also pay tax to support the Anglican Church and their monarchy, also for reasons of history…
The only way to root out corruption is to punish those who are found guilty of it. But the Arroyo administration has been notably lax in pursuing open-and-shut high-profile cases pending with the Ombudsman for the past five years – i.e. the plunder cases against Gen. Garcia, Gen. Ligot and Col. Rabusa – because pursuing these cases would expose a number of high-ranking generals and former generals who were complicit with then VP Arroyo in staging a power grab against then President Estrada.
In one of my visits to Singapore in the 1990s, the Singapore Embassy in Manila arranged for me to get a briefing from the Corrupt Practices Investigative Bureau (CPIB), an office directly under the Prime Minister (Lee Kwan Yew).
The CPIB office was on the 6th floor of a car park on Hennesy Road. As you step out of the elevator, you step into the entrance of the CPIB which is in the form an iron grill door, like the entry to a jail cell. It is psy-war, of course. The message is deliberately intimidating: if the CPIB summons you to its office, you are as good as jailed.
According to the CPIB chief then, a Mr. Yeoh, his office had investigated three members of parliament, two of whom were also Cabinet members. Of the three, one skipped the country; the second was found guilty and put in jail; the third committed suicide, leaving behind a note of apology for the prime minister.
Prayers or no prayers, this would never happen here, except under a revolutionary government. *****
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